Cloud migration can be a gold mine for companies. Those companies that take the path toward digitization can reap the vast benefits provided by the cloud and also put themselves ahead of the competition. However, the complexity of such a project can pose challenges, as was highlighted in a recent report on cloud adoption in the United Kingdom. In the report, as many as 43% of companies reported migration complexity as a primary difficulty while another 32% noted the lack of internal knowledge.

Despite these numbers, other statistics show that the challenges that companies might face in migrating have not scared them away from this technology. In fact, most business owners passed the initial “to cloud or not to cloud” dilemma and bravely moved onto the next phase, which is “when to cloud” and “how to cloud.”

Ensuring pain-free cloud migration requires attention to detail and, of course, a reliable partner to guide you through the process. If you are still in the “to cloud or not to cloud” stage, if you’re convinced but not sure where to start your migration project, read on. Below, you’ll find a list of 5 steps you can take to ease the journey:

Step 1. Plan everything in detail

Before you start the actual migration process, you should have a plan in place. This means you must understand every step and detail involved in a cloud migration. We call this the research stage, and it is essentially when team members join forces and try to gather as much information as possible. Some topics to focus on during this period would involve considering:

• The type of cloud that best suits your needs
• The way migration impacts your overall business operation
• The potential risks and challenges you should be aware of.

By doing this, you and your team will have a strong foundation upon which your migration plan or strategy may rest, along with the relevant arguments to support the project when you pitch it to the board.

Yet, if during this step many challenges arise and time is short, the best thing to do is to contact a cloud migration company, such as RiverMeadow to help you along your way.

Step 2. Set realistic goals

Being different should never be a problem for a business. In fact, differences give you the opportunity to stay ahead of the competition. When considering cloud migration, however, your unique business requirements must act as a guide throughout the entire process.

Having all this in mind, a business should set its own priorities when it comes to the cloud, because a magic cloud solution that fits all companies simply doesn’t exist. This stage relies mostly on the first one, as it will allow companies to understand both the project and their business infrastructure, which is critical in setting realistic objectives.

Step 3. Analyze your on-premise environment

Preparing for cloud migration presents a valuable opportunity for you to analyze your current on-premise environment including all data and applications. In doing so, your company can rank its environment in terms of criticality for the business, which will help determine the future cloud structure as well as the order in which to migrate workloads.

Once a company has a full inventory of its environment, it can also figure out the resources it needs for the migration and the cost.

Step 4. Ensure technical support throughout the entire migration

Most companies start considering a cloud migration when looking for a disaster recovery service. And yes, there is considerable peace of mind to be had in knowing that your business data is continuously backed-up to a secondary storage drive, with no downtime or lost data.

But it’s important to note that cloud migration is a little different. Rather than creating replicas in the event of a crisis, cloud migration is planned at a convenient time for your business. During migration, it’s important that a company has an expert at hand. 24/7 support is mandatory for each process.

Step 5. Find a reliable cloud migration platform

Regardless of the cloud solution a company might choose after the documentation phase, there is still one question that remains—what tool should it use for the final migration? Not every platform is able to provide the options that a business needs, so finding the right one is essential.

Data-only migration, cross-hypervisor support, bulk migration, platform support, and the ease of use or security are just a few things to consider when analyzing cloud migration platforms.

Final thoughts

Cloud migration is a crucial point for many business development strategies. Planning and implementing it can be a challenge for a company, especially when it lacks the necessary technical knowledge. Fortunately, help is at hand. Companies like RiverMeadow can assist businesses in both creating a cloud migration plan and implementing it, thanks to its SaaS solution, which can accelerate and automate a cloud migration while improving the overall cloud journey.