Moving to the Cloud

The following article outlines what it takes for a cloud migration to Google Cloud Compute, Amazon Web Services, or Microsoft Azure means. Most businesses want to move to the “cloud” but have no idea what that means.

If you’re a small business you typically have a couple computers scattered around with one storage device. If you’re a medium or large business you probably already have several servers at a location in a contract. Moving to the cloud is often pitched to businesses using Software-as-a-Service replacing the current system with a web application that runs through your browser. While this is ideal, in most instances it isn’t practical. So you keep paying for a bloated IT infrastructure that is dated, isn’t as reliable, and unable to change with your business needs.

Performing a Cloud Migration

Leverage Google Cloud Compute, Amazon Web Services, or Microsoft Azure to perform a cloud migration. Moving your servers will often end up costing between $100 – $400 per server a month depending on your environment. When you factor in that there is no capital expenditure, maintenance, or power costs this is a far cheaper solution than your current environment. You also gain a SUBSTANTIAL increase in flexibility, performance, and reliability. So why hasn’t everyone transitioned to these services?

Migration Pains

The main issue is getting a cloud migration completed. It’s hard to find businesses, technicians, or engineers that will do the migration. In the end, you should be paying these companies directly.

Pitfalls

1. Contracting a company that uses their own hardware and you pay them for substandard service and equipment on a monthly basis.
2. Under-estimating the extended downtime that is required for moving to these services. If you have 30+ servers it will take months for preparation, transfer time, and deployment.
3. Degraded service if you have to work in a hybrid environment. Working through a VPN for an extended time that it takes to complete the full migration.
4. Mass Storage – Most of the cost of using these services come from storage, and typically it’s not till you hit the petabytes that you’d run into ROI issues. As a general rule of thumb, anything less than 1000 Terabytes is more cost-effective using these services.

Conclusion

I think every business should be leveraging this technology. The larger the business the harder the cloud migration will be. Small businesses I’ve done in the course of a day, whereas larger businesses take considerably longer. Stay the course and keep searching for talent capable of helping with this transition. I enjoy using all three of these major players in the market, however, for Website Hosting and Linux boxes I like Google Cloud Compute the most, and for businesses already running Office 365 Microsoft Azure makes for the easiest transition.