Second Wave of COVID-19: Preparing For Now And Future Businesses With Cloud Migration Strategies

• By Martin Moyers
• 29-07-2020
• Technology

Times are off. Businesses are struggling hard to survive amid COVID-19 while continuing its operations remotely. It has created pressure to adopt the shift towards cloud migration. Also, by now, it is understood that digital transformation will become the most effective driver for businesses to survive and sail through the pandemic. The sudden outbreak of this pandemic has led companies to plan for future operations of their business to continue smooth workings in case of shutdowns.

Therefore, leaders of today’s enterprises are now prioritizing cloud migration strategies to put into practice for smooth access of data to their employees, stakeholders, and clients.

Before Feb 2020, research analysts projected that the worldwide public cloud services market would jump by 17% by the end of this year, reaching $266.4 million. However, these figures are likely to increase after the spread of COVID-19 post first quarter of 2020. Infrastructure-as-a-service has gained momentum and is considered the second-largest segment in the cloud migration space after software as a service segment.

During this sudden and sweeping change, many businesses that were well equipped with the cloud technology managed to switch their work from infrastructure to remote. On the other hand, many organizations were figuring out ways to mobilize their work and implement certain technology amendments to keep their businesses running. Under such circumstances, how soon can businesses adopt cloud migration for their infrastructure?

With this post, we want to express the best ways of scaling up your infrastructure and reap the maximum benefits of cloud migration practices maintaining the constraints of COVID-19.

1. Data migration for teams to work remotely
To maintain social distancing mandates amid the pandemic, many organizations have shifted their workforce to ‘work from home’. The on-premise presence of employees can be avoided if you move the data to the cloud. In rare case scenarios, certain work is required to operate from on-site. Businesses can consult service providers for guidance on managing maximum incorporating cloud technology and tools.

2. Workforce training program
It is important to build confidence among employees working for your business to get accustomed to new ways of operations. To sync them in, companies should connect with cloud technology leaders and conduct several activities such as providing training, workshops, information. With these practices, teams will be able to cope with the new environment of managing their work over the cloud.

3. Planning and Assessment
Transition into the cloud takes a lot of planning. The first step involves consolidating the data centers and server farms. Also, cloud-based services come in three models- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Most companies generally conduct workshops to assess the number of computing resources required. They also decide on the model that they need for their organization. Backup drives and software also have charges that need careful consideration before committing to a cloud service.

4. Designing and Build
Design thinking is the brand new key to Innovation. After the cloud computing model is taken care of, the next step is to create design documentation. This documentation will help the cloud service providers to prepare the migration and plan the implementation. Also, it will help to create an optimal IT backup and recovery site. The site can be either hot, warm, or a cold site.
Data virtualization is another important aspect of migration into a cloud platform. It allows the retrieval and manipulation of data by an application without any technical nitty-gritty.

5. Pilot Testing
Cloud migration also has some risks associated with it. So, to ensure that the applications and the database management systems work efficiently in the cloud environment, every organization is advised to carry out the pilot testing of the cloud platform. The pilot testing helps make sure that there are no technical faults in the running of the applications. It also helps the developers identify any issue and verify the migration process. All minute glitches can be prevented with the Pilot Testing.

6. Overcome The Risks
After the implementation of the cloud architecture, it is important to check that all the databases which are being imputed are secure and safe. Below are some of the cloud security mechanisms which you can use to stay safe and secure.

● Don’t hurry to set up a cloud account and take sufficient time to ensure that the users can get appropriate privileges from it. Always give the least privileges to the users and make sure that sharing accounts is not allowed.
● The manual processes must be avoided, such as backups and transfer.nstead this automates everything. These steps can help in preventing any human error.
● To maintain cloud infrastructure, you need to divide and delegate duties. For example, you can create a team that will take care that utilized is staying up-to-date with the patches.
● Bring some of the tools that can find out the malicious users, which will even allow you to drill down. It’s essential to keep the data of all in and out of the database.

You need to plan a proper team and personnel who will be responsible for monitoring the cloud platform and activities. You need to take some time to review the migration and learn what actually could be improved. If there any other action they need to take to solve further issues.

Final Thoughts
We understand times are tough and it has slowed down for all of us. Due to this pandemic of COVID-19, everything has changed for the entire world. Therefore with the new normal, this is the right time that an organization should migrate to the cloud. Not only the cloud is cost-effective but it is even fast to deploy. Every business is looking for an app developer who can develop their business app.

Though we recommend cloud migration as a remedy to keep businesses running, it is also important to learn about best practices rather than jumping indirectly. Also, it’s important to keep the security policies in place from your end and keep everything secure. There are some risks involved in cloud migration but it is in your hand how to make it secure and safe. The benefits that you can receive are countless so it's hard to ignore.