Cloud Computing and Migration – Simplified!

Consider an office space that has all the amenities one would imagine, including 24-hour surveillance, manned security, round the clock maintenance services and room for unlimited expansion. Now consider having to pay rent for this space. It definitely wouldn’t come cheap. However, if you shared the space with another office, the impact of rent will reduce significantly. The “cloud” is a similar space for your data and applications. Where you get to enjoy all the benefits of maintenance, monitoring and security while still reaping the advantages of economies of scale. Cloud migration is the process of moving a company’s on-premise digital business operations into the cloud. It involves moving data, applications and IT processes from on-premise, or legacy infrastructure, to the cloud. However, the term can also apply to a migration from one cloud to another cloud.

What is a Legacy Infrastructure?

In computing, software or hardware is “legacy” when outdated but still in use. Legacy products and processes are usually not as efficient or secure as more up-to-date solutions. Businesses stuck running legacy systems are in danger of falling behind their competitors in capabilities, ; as well as facing an increased cost of maintenance and higher risk of data breaches.

Main Benefits of Cloud Migration?

• · Scalability: Cloud computing can be scaled up to support larger workloads and greater number of users far more easily than on-premise infrastructure. On-premise solutions require companies to purchase and set up additional physical servers, networking equipment, or software licenses every time they expand their operations.

• · Cost: Companies that move to the cloud often vastly reduce the amount they spend on IT operations, since the cloud providers handle maintenance and upgrades. Purchasing software licenses and subscribing to maintenance minimizes various IT costs. Instead of keeping things up and running, companies can focus more resources on critical business needs such as, developing new products or improving existing ones.

• · Performance: A move to the cloud can significantly enrich the performance of business operations and enhance customer experience. A cloud-based application or website provide superior responsiveness reducing latency and optimizing performance.

• · Flexibility: Users, whether they’re employees or customers, can access the cloud services and data they need from anywhere. This makes it easier for a business to expand into new territories, offer their services to international audiences, and let their employees work flexibly from remote locations.

What Are the Main Challenges of Migrating to The Cloud?

• · Migrating large databases: Often, databases will need to move to a different platform altogether in order to function on the cloud. Moving a database is difficult, especially if there are large amounts of data involved. Data can either be transferred physically or through the internet depending on the size of the data. Regardless of the method, data migration often takes significant time.

• · Data integrity: After data is transferred, the next step is making sure data is intact and secure and not leaked during the process.

• · Continued operation: A business needs to ensure that its current systems remain operational and available throughout the migration. They will need to have some overlap between on-premises and cloud to ensure continuous service; For instance, it’s necessary to make a copy of all data in the cloud before shutting down an existing database. Businesses typically need to move a little bit at a time instead of all at once.

What Cloud Deployment Style Should Companies Choose?

In addition to cloud migration strategy, businesses need to decide how their cloud deployment will look once the migration is complete.

• · A Hybrid Cloud mixes two or more types of environments, combining public clouds, private clouds, or on-premises legacy data centers. For a hybrid cloud deployment to work well, integration must be tight across all deployed clouds and data centers. Similar to team members who need especially tight communication once spread out across different offices.

• · A Multi-Cloud Deployment combines two or more public clouds. (More than one customer can access and use the Public cloud). Multi-cloud can serve several purposes: redundancy/backup, cost savings, or leveraging features from different cloud providers.

• · Deploying a Single Cloud from just one cloud vendor is not always feasible for a business, but it is an option. Cloud providers offer both public clouds and private clouds – the difference being that private clouds are not shared with any other business.

How CSG Technologies Can Help

Deploying cloud based operational environment requires migration from legacy (or old) IT infrastructure and system to the new cloud-based systems. This requires re-platforming, re-architecting, data migration, and managing complex network environments. CSG Technologies partners with leading public cloud vendors such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google to provide services that range from assessments and migration planning, to executing the migration, to leveraging and managing the new cloud solutions. When considering a move to the cloud, we’d be glad to help you navigate this process.

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