Although you’re unlikely to be handling the physical migration itself, you do need to have a think about how it’s going to work. Are you going to switch everything to the cloud all at once, or are you going to take a phased approach, moving a bit at a time?
The phased approach
Taking the slower road and moving your system bit by bit gives you, or the person doing the migration, the opportunity to test each piece as they go, reducing the likelihood of downtime, or the unnecessary loss or corruption of data. Doing it this way does also mean you’ll be working across both your old and new systems until the transition is complete.
Everything in one go
Moving everything in one go can be more like ripping off a plaster. It’ll give more solid dates for completion, but there’s a higher risk of things going wrong – especially if you’re moving a lot of data all at the same time.
Whichever approach you take, having target completion dates in your plan is important. If you’re going down the phased routes, make sure each phase has a date. This will help keep the project moving with less chance of a stall.
Does migrating to the cloud mean downtime?
Evaluating the success of moving to the cloud
Much like taking a challenging walk up a steep hill, turning around and evaluating your progress is a really important part of the process. And also like taking a challenging walk up a steep hill, you’ll hopefully have a gorgeous view when you reach the top!
In our post Is the Cloud Good for Business? we talked about knowing your reasons for moving to the cloud, and the goals you may have. It’s a good opportunity here to turn this initial wishlist into a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) so you’ll be able to see how much of an impact it’s had on your business, and if the move has helped you to achieve your goals.
These KPIs might include things like staff experience, performance and infrastructure cost. Especially with ‘cost-cutting’ topping the list of reasons why enterprises choose to adopt the cloud.
Before you make the move, take some baseline measurements in these areas so that you’ve got a comparison in order to ensure that your system is meeting or exceeding your expectations once the cloud migration is complete.
Take your time over this though. You might even want to do an evaluation one-month post-migration, 6 months post-migration, and a year post-migration to see if you’re completely happy or if any changes are needed.
Starting the evaluation process too early can be a bit demoralising because any new system is going to come with a time of adjustment. Staff are likely to take a while to get used to a new way of working and may come across some minor issues that need sorting before everything is running smoother than a dolphin’s flipper.
This means that your KPIs one month after moving to the cloud might not be as good as your KPIs at 6 months once everyone is running smoothly and your people are happy with this new way of working.
Would you like to know more about what moving to the cloud could achieve for your business? We have a huge amount of experience working with businesses on planning, implementing, and evaluating cloud migrations. Book a call here, and we can chat about what you’re looking to achieve and how we can help.
