3 Considerations to Make Before Cloud Network Migration

by Nick Barto · May 13, 2022

Cloud network migration for most organizations at this point is part of the future IT roadmap. Though cloud migrations sometimes remain stalled due to concerns over security as well as maintaining total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment (ROI), the next few years will see an inordinate growth in the amount of data center traffic coming exclusively from cloud services.

When cloud network migrations are part of a company’s march into the future, there are some key considerations to make.

Providers Are Not All Are the Same

The number of cloud service providers has grown rapidly, with Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Rackspace being just a few of the organizations that offer enterprise cloud services. They also all happen to have existing track records of delivering such services, giving a discerning organization plenty of history and information with which to judge the best partner to meet its network needs.

Pricing is typically one the main points of consideration when choosing a vendor. Though most cost models are usage-based, rates, policies, service tiers, and SLAs vary greatly among providers. Cost, however, should not be totally overshadow less tangible factors such as how well a cloud provider’s technological direction aligns with strategic vision.

Transitioning Systems in a Simple, Slow, Staged Approach

An organization will often have to start somewhere when moving systems to the cloud. This approach should be phased – cloud migrations that fail tend to do so due to the decision to transfer over too much complexity at once. The guideline for beginning such a migration is to select a system component that has low complexity, lax security requirements, and limited risk of failure to the organization.

Straight Replication of the Existing Infrastructure Never Works

It behooves an organization to not plan on a one-to-one mapping of existing resources into the cloud. Doing so would mitigate the advantages in terms of scalability and better resource allocation that justify the move to the cloud in the first place. Cloud solutions offer many ways to improve tech mainstays such as application servers, DMZs, and database service. Such improvements should be an essential part of any cloud migration plan rather than an afterthought.

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