Let’s take a look at a common scenario: you’re a small business, your current IT infrastructure isn’t keeping up with company growth, so your current environment is holding you back. It’s time to consider cloud migration for businesses, but where do you start? This article will give you some basic guidelines to figure out when it’s time to migrate to the cloud.
Here is a list of items we’ll cover:
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- Running out of IT resources
- Remote employee support
- Keep up to date with updates and security patches
- Note enough real estate for hardware
- High IT costs
- Poor performance
- How Corporate Technologies can help
Running Out of IT Resources
This item is a common one. Whether it’s storage space, slow servers, or a lack of applications, running out of IT resources slows business growth. Employees need to delete files to make room for more. Servers crash and cause data loss. Sometimes businesses can’t compete because competitors have better applications. All these issues inhibit business growth.
As you run out of resources, you can frustrate customers and cause issues. In extreme cases, data loss can turn into liabilities and potential legal issues. You need enough resources for employees to do their job or your business growth will always be inhibited, but cloud migration for businesses can help eliminate this issue.
Here are a few IT resources that can be migrated to the cloud:
- Servers
- Routers
- Storage
- Business applications
- Identity and access management (IAM)
- Cybersecurity
- Compliance software
- Compute
You Need Remote Employee Support
The fastest way to support remote employees is to migrate to the cloud. Instead of building infrastructure like VPN and cybersecurity on-premises, you can offload it all to a cloud provider. You still need to manage the account and make sure that you configure cloud resources properly, but all the compute power and uptime is on the cloud provider.
Cloud migration for businesses is a slow process, because you need to ensure that you have no downtime. You can migrate to the cloud and have remote employees test infrastructure casually. Another option is to slowly roll out new services to the cloud to allow employees time to get used to their new environment.
Here are a few reasons why cloud migration for businesses can help with remote employees:
- Give employees the ability to work from home
- Emergency overnight employees respond faster
- Owners can work during weekends
- Some employees travel for work
Can’t Keep Up with Software Updates and Security Patches
Depending on your infrastructure, updates can be a full-time job. An IT person must constantly patch software, and some updates might cause downtime. Downtime is more stress for the IT person and loss in productivity. A loss in productivity means a loss in revenue. The issues snowball when IT infrastructure fails.
When you migrate businesses to the cloud, the infrastructure is updated automatically by the cloud provider. Firmware and software is updated without intervention from administrators. You still need to configure business infrastructure properly, but you don’t need to worry about updates. This benefit takes a lot of the overhead off your IT employees and frees their time to do something else.
Cloud providers automatically update:
- Network hardware
- Business applications
- Servers
- Operating systems
- Cybersecurity infrastructure
Cloud Migration for Businesses: Not Enough Space (Real Estate) for Hardware
Adding infrastructure requires real estate. You need a room built for IT hardware too. The room must have low humidity, cool temperatures, and no traffic. Not every business has a room like this available. An IT closet doesn’t need to be big, but it must be the right environment for equipment.
You don’t need to worry about space at all when you migrate your business to the cloud. Businesses can choose to keep some internal infrastructure, but you can also migrate everything but mobile devices to the cloud. The advantage of having cloud structure is that you can expand and reduce resources as needed.
Signs that you need to migrate to the cloud:
- Hardware closet is too small
- Disorganized network cables
- Hardware isn’t audited
- Retired hardware takes up space
High IT Costs
Computer hardware is expensive, especially since memory costs are up. Paying for new hardware is expensive. After cloud migration for businesses, you can expand your current resources at a fraction of the cost.
With cloud providers, you pay for the resources that you use. You can pay three or four figures a month, depending on the number of resources that you roll out. The benefit of cloud resources is that you can scale up during busy seasons and scale down during slow seasons to save money.
One aspect of saving money with cloud computing is that you also no longer pay the utility expenses. Electricity costs also drop when you migrate your infrastructure to the cloud. You no longer need the extra cooling and 24/7 uptime for your hardware. It’s one extra cost savings most businesses forget when moving their IT to the cloud.
Savings in the cloud include:
- Electricity
- Support costs
- Replacement hardware
- Real estate
Poor Performance
Old hardware eventually stops working or has poor performance. You need to replace it, but it’s expensive. Instead of coming up with the funds to replace old hardware, moving to the cloud is much more cost efficient.
Slow hardware performance has hidden costs also. It slows down productivity and affects revenue. You always get the latest hardware in the cloud.
Poor performance affects:
- Revenue
- Productivity
- Customer service
- Business stability
- Support applications
How Corporate Technologies Can Help Cloud Migration for Businesses
Most business owners don’t know what to do to migrate to the cloud. You need to preserve uptime while being thorough in your procedures. Corporate Technologies can help.
Contact Corporate Technologies to see how we can help your cloud migration for businesses.
FAQs
Q: How much does cloud migration cost?
A: Costs for migration to the cloud depends on the resources that you deploy and the amount of users you have onsite.
Q: What happens if I run out of resources in the cloud?
A: Every cloud provider has a dashboard where you can deploy more resources when you need them.
Q: Can I use onsite hardware with cloud hardware?
A: Yes, you can integrate cloud hardware with your onsite hardware.
Q: Do I need to update cloud computing resources?
A: No, resources are automatically updated by the cloud provider.
Q: How do I manage cloud resources?
A: You can have an IT employee manage them or outsource your cloud management to Corporate Technologies.
