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Adopting any new technology for your infrastructure requires a solid strategy, and cloud migration is no exception to that rule. While there can be many benefits to cloud migration, including agility and scalability, it can also be expensive, especially if you don’t plan and predict the costs beforehand. Moving data and applications to the cloud is no small feat, and in order to see the greatest success, you need to prepare and plan your cloud migration strategy.
Not every application is right for the cloud. While the cloud has immense value, it isn’t the answer to everything. As organizations realize the benefits of cloud computing, many are rushing to migrate every application or workload to the cloud, and in the process, making a mistake that could end up being incredibly costly. Instead, IT leaders should carefully consider whether the cloud is the right fit for each use case. When evaluating whether a particular application or workload is suitable for a cloud, two of the biggest factors to consider are performance and cost. If your organization is planning a cloud migration, maximize your chances of success by following these keys to data management prep for cloud migration.
Optimize Performance
As more applications migrate to the cloud, effective performance management is becoming a top concern. Reliability is key for businesses, and slower than expected operations for a business can quickly lead to angry employees and customers. Very quickly, poor cloud application performance can lead to reduced productivity and lost opportunities.
Poor cloud application performance can have a variety of causes, including:
- Network latency – latency affects everyone, from the enterprise to the end-user
- Poor database performance – most cloud-based database performance issues come from a poorly designed database rather than a slow one
- Poorly designed application – if an application wasn’t purpose-built for a cloud-computing platform, it is likely the application will not perform up to expectations
In order to see the best performance, it’s essential for IT leaders to identify the best applications for cloud migration. Most enterprises will find that lightly used and not heavy workloads are ideal for cloud migration. For example, an archive or backup is often a good choice to move to the cloud. However, if you do a lot of restores, then that workload may not be a good fit for cloud migration. Ultimately, IT leaders need to think about the applications and the cloud resource within which they’re running and find the right balance to ensure the best performance.
Control Costs
The cloud has a reputation for offering outstanding performance at a low cost, but that isn’t always the case. In fact, the cloud isn’t always the cheapest option; it all depends on the applications being stored in the cloud and how they are used.
In fact, surprises over cloud computing costs and a struggle to accurately budget for usage are a huge factor for many businesses. Cloud storage pricing is rarely all-inclusive and is based on several components, including data storage, network storage, operations usage, retrieval, and early deletion fees. Additionally, cloud costs for both storage and storage activity will vary depending on the storage tier. If you pick the wrong workload, your cloud costs could be drastically higher than you anticipate.
Many companies find themselves wasting money on cloud storage because they either have too many idle resources or they are racking up extra charges. In order to make the cloud work for your organization economically, you must look at your data activity type and usage and identify which workloads will work best in the cloud. Then you must also match the workload to the cloud tier. Even slight changes in your cloud usage can quickly add up. Companies don’t want to be surprised when the bill arrives, so it’s essential to find the right balance, matching workload with storage solutions.
Strategic Cloud Migration Decision Making
Cloud migration can be expensive, particularly if you don’t approach it strategically. Visual One helps businesses avoid costly missteps by providing them with tools and forecasting models that assist with strategic decision making. As IT leaders are trying to determine which applications are the best candidates for cloud migration, Visual One can help by tracking and providing the following information:
- how often data is accessed
- how fast it needs to be accessed
- the date it was last accessed
- how much you are reading and writing to data files
Visual One automates data collection of an organization’s storage and infrastructure data, capturing all the necessary data and then serving it back to a business in a format that is easier for decision making. Knowing your data access patterns will allow IT leaders to carefully consider what to move and avoid costly missteps in the process. AT Visual One, we believe that storage reporting should be simple, cost-effective, and actionable, allowing IT leaders to make more informed strategic decisions. Schedule a demo to talk to a Visual One data expert.
Key Takeaways
- Cloud migration requires a solid strategy.
- When evaluating whether a particular application or workload is suitable for a cloud, two of the biggest factors to consider are performance and cost.
- Poor cloud application performance can lead to reduced productivity and lost opportunities.
- Cloud migration can be expensive, particularly if you don’t approach it strategically.
- Visual One enables IT leaders to determine which applications are the best candidates for cloud migration.
