Top Cloud Migration Benefits & Tips to Avoid Potential Risks

 

 

 

Cloud migration has been a buzzword among CIOs and CTOs for a while now. But the pandemic-induced digitization wave propelled migration to the cloud at an unprecedented rate. As small and large businesses alike were forced to amp their tech capabilities up, the cloud seemed to be a quick fix. The benefits are many. However, there are significant risks, too—if you don’t do cloud integration or migration properly.

Over the past few years, cloud computing superstars like AWS, IBM, and Microsoft Azure have seen a substantial rise in revenue. It’s mainly due to businesses’ increased interest in digital technologies and scalability. Whether it’s cloud API integration or full-blown migration, you get incredible scalability and data security with the cloud. But you always need to do it strategically, averting every potential risk.
 
And that’s what this post intends to help with. We’ll discuss the most remarkable benefits and risks of cloud migration. Read on to make informed decisions about cloud computing.
Key benefits of cloud migration

Migrating your business's workflows and tech solutions to the cloud brings a wide array of benefits. Below are the top ones.

• Boundless scalability

We’re living in a time of rapid change —more so in the business landscape. As consumer demands evolving faster than ever, scalability needs to be a top operational priority. A cloud-based digital ecosystem makes your business incredibly scalable while ensuring data security. Besides, you just need to pay for the amount of cloud space you use. Hence, ramping up operations gets smoother than ever.

• Cost-effectiveness

Cost-efficiency is a top benefit of cloud integration that convinces many businesses to go digital. Cloud-based solutions save a substantial amount of overhead costs when compared with on-premises software systems. The cloud saves your money spent on hardware devices, software maintenance, and the energy required to keep on-premises systems up and running.
Seamless collaboration

In an era of ruthless competition, collaboration is crucial to business success. It could be collaboration among your employees or strategic partnership with a software development company, for example. The cloud environment makes collaborative work incredibly painless. You can effortlessly manage access and security control of your business data. Since your system is built on the cloud, you can get access to it from anywhere you want.

Potential risks involved in cloud integration

Cloud migration, like many other tech-enabled processes, is not without risks. But with the right approach and expertise, you can avert every single risk. Here’s how.
The lack of a cloud migration plan

No matter what kind of cloud migrating you’re thinking of, you’d need extensive planning. Risks quadruple when you move to the cloud without a strategic plan. You could use cloud SaaS, private cloud, or hybrid cloud migrating your tech ecosystem. The first order of business is to choose a cloud hosting service provider. Cloud computing giants like AWS and Microsoft offer an array of offerings for different kinds of business needs. You could also choose a software development company and get your cloud environment personalized.

While planning for cloud migration, you need to keep a few key elements on the top of your mind. These include the extent of scalability, cost, data security, and tech support.
Incompatibility with existing systems

As a business owner or CIO, you have multiple cloud models to choose from. However, there are always risks of compatibility issues while migrating. The best way to avoid such risks is to thoroughly analyze your existing system and initiate the migration process accordingly. A software development company having expertise in cloud solutions could help you achieve a risk-free cloud migration. Make sure that before moving your workloads to the cloud, you test the systems for compatibility.

• Data loss & security threats

With a cloud-based environment, you usually dramatically reduce the risks of data loss. However, that’s after you have migrated. Cases of data loss during and before the migration process are not rare. It’s mainly because businesses skip one crucial step: creating a data backup.

By creating a backup of your entire business data, you avoid the risks of any kind of data loss. Besides, you need to adopt data security best practices to keep hackers and malware attacks at bay. The global accessibility provided by cloud integration comes with significant data breach risks. That always needs adequate security measures in place.

• System Latency

The latency of your cloud solutions occurs while accessing databases, applications, and tools like CRM. It becomes particularly critical in cases like eCommerce operations, video streaming, and online gaming, among others.

An array of factors could prompt system latency while using cloud solutions. For instance, the geographical distance between the client devices and servers might cause delayed responses. Configuration mismatches could also trigger latency. Your tech team needs to understand these factors to avoid any possible latency.

Wrapping up

With the right approach, you could best use the most advanced capabilities of cloud computing. Cloud integration and migration have helped a significant number of small, medium, and large enterprises to increase their bottom line. As we’ve just discussed, the cloud boosts operational efficiency, makes your tech infrastructure scalable, and fosters collaboration. But all these come with certain risks. You need to strategically move to the cloud while mitigating the risks.