With the speed, flexibility, agility and cost savings offered by the cloud, today every organization is considering moving its data and workloads to the cloud. However, the journey to the cloud can be challenging, if you don’t have the right roadmap, metrics and tools in place. Although you will not be handling the brunt of your company’s cloud migration, there are certain things you can do in preparation to ensure that you have a smooth migration.

Organize your information

Analyze and rationalize your data before you plan the migration. It’s important for you to know what you’re moving and where that information is (whether it’s a single app or a server). Make sure the people in your organization responsible for the cloud migration collaborate to organize all of this information.

Assess what can be migrated separately

Don’t assume you need to migrate everything at once. While there are instances where you need to shift your whole infrastructure for compliance reasons or to replace old servers, it’s better to break things into smaller pieces. Consider moving your systems like accounting software, ERP or telephones to the cloud individually. This will help minimize disruption and make the move gradual and more effective.

Decide what to re-locate and what to rebuild

Some workloads can be easily shifted to the cloud by a ‘lift-and-shift’ approach. Many servers and programs can be moved as-is with minimal vendor involvement. In the case of application migration, apps that are required to be upgraded, it’s often wiser to start from scratch and build it new in the cloud environment. You can test the new versions of the apps in the cloud safely and make them operational once they are fully screened.

Engage your employees

Efficient employee engagement is crucial to ensure a successful migration to the cloud. Oftentimes, employees can become wary and overwhelmed by new technologies and how to use it. However, if they are invited to contribute to the new solution and its role in the organization, the effectiveness of the adoption will be far greater. A top-down approach will act as a guide for all the members of the team. As such, the leaders in your organization must be comfortable with the new systems and processes to encourage others to embrace the change.

Train your employees thoroughly

This is crucial. Everyone in your team should have comprehensive training on how to use the cloud infrastructure and how to leverage it to improve their productivity and efficiency. This ensures that your employees, as well as your organization, remain productive, even after the big change.

Consistently re-evaluate

Your cloud solution is not a static component of your business. It should grow and evolve as your business grows and evolves. Therefore, it is highly important to identify and address issues as you encounter them and re-evaluate if your cloud solution is still meeting your core business goals.

If you are planning to migrate your data and workloads to the cloud and building a seamless cloud migration strategy, we recommend you to have these best practices in your migration strategy to heave a seamless and successful cloud journey. Want to experience a superior cloudification journey for your organization, ACI experts can help you with your cloud enablement initiatives. We are just clicks away.