Accelerate Cloud Migration for a Complete Digital Transformation

Migrating to the cloud is a change that has proven to be beneficial to organizations across the globe. This type of solution can help companies save money, heighten security, and improve the overall function of their organizations. Additionally, cloud computing allows users access to their data and software applications no matter where they are. The adoption of this technology has been happening for years, meaning companies have a lot of options when considering cloud providers.

Despite the clear advantages of cloud services, many organizations have been hesitant to commit fully to cloud-based infrastructures. There are several reasons for this hesitancy, including time, cost, and organizational strategy. A concerted, unified approach to cloud adoption takes time, and without proper governance in place, you’re bound to encounter challenges.

Companies also struggle to come to terms with the cost of cloud migration. When you build your own cloud with the company of your choice, it’s up to you to monitor it post-deployment for any cost optimization opportunities. Without a price structure, costs are unpredictable in the industry.

To truly take advantage of the cloud as a whole, organizations must understand and be strategic about what benefits the cloud provides, what challenges they might face, and how to mitigate them.

Benefits of Migrating to the Cloud

When it comes to migrating to the cloud, several motivating factors might influence your decision, including:

1. Hands-off Maintenance
Once you move your workloads to the cloud, you don’t have to worry about mundane tasks such as patching operating systems, upgrading software, or performing backups on an ongoing basis. This is all taken care of for you so that you can focus on more pressing tasks, such as building apps or running your business.

2. Development Tools
Developing a functional application is much easier when you’re using the cloud. The cloud provides many benefits to developers and DevOps, including agility, scalability, and automated deployments via infrastructure as code. And many tools are available to help you take advantage of these benefits immediately. Using the cloud as a testing and development environment utilizes the latest technology available today.

3. Agile Architecture
Cloud-native architecture is also on the rise, which can make your applications more agile. One type of architectural approach that embodies this concept well is microservices, which are small and granular, less expensive than virtual machines or servers, and easy to update and modify on an ongoing basis.

4. Freedom to Experiment
Cloud providers use the latest technology to create cloud architecture. They release new applications and data for machine learning quite frequently, which helps ensure that you are always aware of changes and new applications being offered. It is also much easier and cheaper to experiment on the cloud than invest in potentially expensive hardware and software.

5. Strong Security
Many organizations turn to the cloud due to its security. Cloud providers spend billions of dollars implementing and strengthening security measures on the cloud. They are constantly working to enhance their platforms to ensure compliance with regulations set for privacy and security, denial of service attacks, and firewall standards. Many organizations believe that cloud providers do a much better job addressing security concerns than any single enterprise can do on its own.

Cloud Capabilities Expand Beyond Infrastructure

When infrastructure shifts to the cloud, it becomes easier for departments to work together. A large entertainment company saw its infrastructure teams working more efficiently after making the shift. These teams could now deploy new servers instantly, enabling them to use fewer workers to support a much larger infrastructure footprint. It also helped to improve time-to-market, as they went live in six new locations in record time.

Traditional infrastructure doesn’t offer the elasticity possible with the cloud. On the cloud, scaling up is easy and scaling down is automatic when needed, which is why customers are turning to the cloud more than ever before. Once consumers warm up to cloud infrastructure and see how much easier it makes running a business, they’ll start to do more with it.

More companies are turning to the cloud as a proven, efficient, and beneficial solution. Superior computing power can lead to a deeper understanding of your customer’s needs, while extra processing capacity allows for complex analytics or innovative new ideas. This leads to a number of growth opportunities, allowing organizations to accelerate lead times for new products, venture into new markets, and respond timely to viable threats.

Challenges That Companies Face Today

Although cloud computing can address concerns about how to cut down costs associated with managing business systems, the price models of cloud use can be incredibly complicated. When team members do not understand how the model works, it can result in organizations spending more money than they planned.

In addition, inflation has caused some significant increases in the costs of cloud services. Companies are also seeing rises in price due to the increased usage of cloud computing systems. Cloud production costs will continue to rise as more companies invest in upskilling and foundational software. This early investment might not yield results for a while, but it will increase design and production savings later on.

In addition to costs, many companies are on a tight schedule and might be unable to fit a migration into their daily routines. Businesses must continue to function as expected, after all. Given the fact that cloud migration takes time, it’s essential to be strategic about your migration timeline.

Organizational alignment is another issue that comes up regarding migrating to the cloud. All areas of the organization must be on the same page moving forward to find cloud success. Many organizations have different groups in different locations with different needs. Some can benefit from a cloud migration at scale, while others might not be as motivated to take the leap. This lack of motivation could result in some team members being hesitant to undergo training to use the system. Unfamiliarity with the system can be an incredible challenge, especially if workers are not motivated to learn the cloud’s features and all it has to offer.

Although these challenges are very real for some organizations, they are not impossible to conquer. Recognizing the benefits of optimizing in the cloud can give your organization and its members fundamental knowledge about how cloud architecture can make processes run smoothly.

What Else Can the Cloud Do for You?

Optimizing the cloud will help your organization in a variety of ways. One of a cloud organization’s most notable benefits is the reduced costs associated with managing its systems. The cloud has a lot of elasticity, meaning companies can expand and decrease usage as needed, which allows them to stop wasting money on space they do not need. There are also endless tools available that reveal opportunities for optimizing costs.

Additionally, organizations benefit from having a plethora of production-grade and enterprise-grade applications at their disposal. Traditionally, you would be required to manage and monitor all these things. However, the cloud allows you to optimize your organization and reduce the overhead costs of doing so. In addition, by employing cloud consolidation, companies can further reduce costs by centralizing cloud computing onto one platform.

Establishing a Cloud Business Office (or CBO) is vital to ensure governance controls over your cloud. This needs to be done during the initial setup process to ensure the cloud migration at scale goes accordingly. A CBO is a centralized system that manages all participants and their workloads; it controls the budgets and works with you to monitor them throughout the process. CBOs are reliable for handling complex workflows, which is necessary for a local office migration.

Automation is also a critical component in migration, which means that parts of the workload migration can be automated––rinse and repeat. This makes scaling to a much broader audience possible and more accessible, rather than dealing with every bespoke migration.

Perhaps the best part about cloud computing is that it encourages you to learn as you go. The cloud’s flexibility allows you to learn on the job, make mistakes, and adjust course. If a project isn’t working, pivot to something else and try again.

CTG Is Here for You

At CTG, our experts are here to help with all your cloud migration needs. Our team has decades of experience in established domains and specific verticals, including financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, and energy. We work with each customer to provide a step-by-step recipe for migration that works for them.

Our Cloud Migration Assessment is an excellent way to discover which applications are good fits for the cloud and which are not. We’ll recommend how best to migrate your data and whether or not to rehost or rebuild it entirely in the cloud. Once we’ve determined eligibility and the migration approach, our team will develop a detailed plan of action, build and deploy the migration strategy, and keep your business running smoothly from start to finish with our Cloud Managed Services.

Our team has worked with more than 250 clients to ensure they leverage the cloud to its highest potential. So, if you’re looking for cloud technology and expertise, CTG is the partner you need.

contact the CTG Team