“Why fix what isn’t’ broken?” used to be an acceptable strategy for doing business. But the mounting pressure to adopt digital transformation strategies is rendering that attitude obsolete. Today, enterprises are fighting tooth and nail just to stay relevant amid the technical evolution. The need to adapt to changes in the market while remaining protected from security threats is becoming a difficult balance to strike with aging legacy systems and outdated operations. Cloud transformation is bridging that gap, marking a new generation of business development.
Getting Acquainted with Cloud Transformation
Cloud transformation is the process of migrating electronic assets from local servers to the cloud. The migration can be limited to only certain programs or apps, or it can shift your entire digital infrastructure to the cloud depending on your needs. Cloud transformation allows you to save data to an off-site location accessible via public internet or a dedicated private network connection. The responsibility of managing and securing your organization’s data will shift from your in-house team to a third-party cloud provider.
Benefits of Cloud Transformation
Choosing to transfer your company to the cloud will positively impact many facets of your business operations. Scalability, speed, collaboration, continuity, and rapid ROI are just a few of the many benefits of cloud transformation.
- Scalable: Unlike on-premises storage, cloud capacity is virtually unlimited so you can scale up as much as you need.
- Increased time to market: Implementing a cloud server takes mere minutes compared to a physical server that requires days or weeks to execute.
- Better collaboration: Cloud transformation allows even the most diverse teams to access, retrieve, and process information anytime, anywhere.
- Business continuity: Cloud transformation provides protection from natural disaster losses or system failures that local servers cannot. The cloud even includes a built-in data backup as an added insurance policy for business continuity.
- Centralized network management: Your cloud provider is responsible for maintaining your data, freeing up your staff from network management tasks.
- Improved security and compliance: RapidScale found that 94% of businesses saw an improvement in security after switching to the cloud, and 91% said the cloud makes it easier to meet government compliance requirements.
- Cost-effectiveness: Cloud environments utilize a subscription approach, so you only pay for the storage you need. Pair this with the cost and time savings realized after migrating data to the cloud, and the potential for ROI increases.
Overcoming Cloud Transformation Challenges
While cloud computing has been a major influence on professional progress, there are still aspects that make it imperfect. Understanding cloud transformation challenges is the first step in overcoming them.
- Security concerns: Like with anything digital, there are inherent security concerns. Cloud storage providers continually check for updates, additional features, and bug fixes to provide you with the most up-to-date defenses against cyber-attacks. Investing in a cloud security posture management service can add an extra layer of security, too.
- Relinquishing control: Having a singularly managed storage environment can be beneficial to employees previously tasked with this work, but it also limits your control. To maintain some authority, team up with a cloud provider that gives you control over where and how your data is stored, processed, and managed. A multi-cloud strategy is also an option for extended ownership over your resources.
- Downtime: Issues like power loss, weak internet connection, or maintenance can disrupt access to cloud data. Companies can minimize latency by increasing connection bandwidth.
AWS Cloud Migration Services
Leveraging AWS Cloud Migration Services helps enterprises flip the switch on cloud transformation. You can migrate any workload—applications, websites, databases, storage, physical or virtual servers, or even entire data centers—from an on-premises environment, hosting facility, or other public cloud to AWS. No matter where you are in your digital transformation journey, AWS’s suite of cloud services builds off your organizational, operational, and technical capabilities so that you can start taking advantage of benefits faster.
- AWS Application Migration Service: AWS Application Migration Service, or AWS MGN, aims to help you simplify and expedite migration to the cloud with minimal downtime.
- AWS Migration Hub: AWS Migration Hub assists in planning, executing, and tracking a portfolio of applications migrating to AWS.
- AWS Application Discovery Service: Application Discovery Service collects server specification information, performance data, and details of running processes and network connections. That data can then be used to estimate the total cost of ownership of running AWS and plan your migration to AWS.
- AWS Database Migration Service: AWS Database Migration Service aids in migrating your database to AWS without interrupting your workflows.
- AWS Server Migration Service: The AWS Server Migration Service automates the migration of your on-premises infrastructure or from Microsoft Azure to AWS.
- AWS Snow Family: AWS Snow Family is helpful in non-data environments or situations with inconsistent connectivity. Physical devices and capacity points help transport up to exabytes of data into and out of AWS.
- AWS DataSync: AWS DataSync is a reliable online data transfer service. It is designed to simplify, automate, and accelerate moving data between on-premises storage systems. It is also applicable for AWS storage services and between AWS storage services.
- AWS Transfer Family: AWS Transfer Family is a great option for transferring your files into and out of Amazon EFS or Amazon S3. It enables performance operation tools like analytics, ML, archiving of the data, processing, and more.
Simplify Cloud Migration with Apexon
At Apexon, our Managed Services and SRE practices will assist you in choosing the most extensive, reliable, and secure cloud infrastructure. Our teams excel in handling complex cloud enterprise architecture. You can rely on us to help you achieve a hassle-free cloud transformation journey. To learn more, check out Apexon’s Cloud Migration services or get in touch directly using the form below.