Organizations today are looking toward the cloud as a means to better manage, secure, and support their IT infrastructure. But a move to the cloud is not as simple as eliminating your organization’s physical network infrastructure and software and moving everything to a hosting company. Not every aspect of the organization can be easily and effectively moved into the cloud, so it is essential to review all the options to ensure that the hosted services (as well as the cloud provider itself) can deliver the desired benefits to your organization.
Why Move to the Cloud
There are many reasons why an enterprise may choose to move from a traditional in-house IT model to the cloud. Budget constraints, utility pricing and proactive management are a few prevalent reasons for considering a move to the cloud.
Budget constraints
Tight budgets have prevented many enterprises from making IT investments, such as new hardware or the latest version of business-critical software. As a result, the cloud has become a way for enterprises to more cost-effectively upgrade their IT infrastructure, compared to the price tag of a large upgrade of in-house hardware and software.
Utility pricing
By moving to the cloud, enterprises can easily scale up or down to meet their changing needs. Because the underlying infrastructure is leveraged across many organizations, the cost per organization is considerably less then maintaining IT infrastructure in-house.
Proactive management
Enterprises also may move to the cloud because they require proactive management and round-the-clock monitoring and support of key systems, robust disaster recovery solutions or a way to minimize downtime of critical applications. Or they may need to support a mobile or geographically dispersed workforce that requires remote support across multiple time zones.
Is your organization “cloud ready”?
There are numerous case studies of how small, medium, and large sized businesses have turned to cloud computing to raise productivity, improve client service and stay ahead of the competition. But is your organization truly ready for this move? Various factors should be considered before making the move:
Assess your needs
To realize the full benefits of the cloud, it is important to define what you would like your organization to achieve. Are you hoping to improve customer service response times? Or, do you want to improve overall collaboration among employees? Articulating your organization’s needs clearly will help greatly in choosing the right cloud service provider. Your cloud services provider should also provide recommendations as to what you should move to the cloud and if there are any applications that should remain on premise.
Select the right service provider
Choosing a cloud service provider can be an intimidating task. There are several criteria that you can use to evaluate a service provider, including: performance, functionality, user support, and security and vendor viability.
Back up and secure your data
Most cloud service providers will assure you that your data is safe. Bigger cloud players will enforce strict data protection policies to protect your data, but not every provider will have these. Most cloud services will allow you to export a copy of your data which you can restore if things go amiss, or if you decide to switch service providers in the future.
Data integration and migration services
Do you need to migrate or integrate existing data that you are housing on your in-house IT systems with your cloud service? This is especially important if you’re not ready to move all your data to the cloud. Your client profile data, for example, may be tied closely to a legacy system which may be difficult to separate. Consider choosing a provider who has system integrators to speed up the process and who are able to project manage your move for you.
Plan your deployment
It is important for your organization to develop a clear implementation plan, which should involve a deployment roadmap, as well as identifying key business and IT transformations with measurable benefits. Upfront planning would help your organization avoid issues like long deployment cycles, limited integration with other applications and lack of proper training. For a hassle-free move to the cloud consider hiring a qualified third party to project manage your deployment to the cloud.
The Litcom Approach
Moving to the cloud can be an ideal proposition for small, medium and large sized organizations. At Litcom, we conduct a thorough assessment of your IT environment to determine how much of it can be moved to the cloud and what, if anything, is better suited to remain in-house.
Litcom has professionals who are experienced in developing and aligning business and IT strategy. We can help your business understand the benefits offered by cloud computing and help you determine where the focus should be for your first project. Litcom professionals have real world experience integrating virtualized and cloud based solutions.
