By 2019 more than eighty percent of businesses were working on the cloud, with over half of them using public cloud platforms like Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure. This is no surprise given how cost-effective cloud enablement can be, and not just for large businesses. Smaller and medium-sized businesses can also reap the benefits of migrating to the cloud.
The impact of cloud enablement
Why cloud enablement? Here are just some of the reasons that company’s large and small are either migrating to the cloud or considering cloud enablement.
- They have access to their data from anywhere at any time. This allows the company greater flexibility in hiring people not on location, as well as the ability to offer their in-house employees the option of working remotely.
- Cloud enablement gives an organization total management over their cloud infrastructure and allows them to scale up or down as needed.
- Cut monthly costs because, with cloud enablement, you are only paying for the services you used that month.
Tools for cloud enablement
Here are four tools as steps for moving, or migrating, your business’s projects, data, infrastructure, and business goals over to a cloud environment. These tools and steps are designed to create a migration without any significant downtime, which is a costly, and reasonable obstacle many businesses have to move over to the cloud.
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Assessment
The first step of assessment is a detailed examination of the existing company’s IT architecture. This is where hiring experts can be helpful because businesses that help other businesses migrate to the cloud know what they are doing. This way they can avoid pitfalls that a company’s IT team, who might not have experience with cloud enablement, might stumble into.
It’s also good to look for services that your business provides that are not in use, and avoid moving these services over to the cloud. Third-party services that are connected to a business’s clients or apps are also examined because they can impact cloud enablement. This assessment will also determine if a business’s server is enough, or whether they will need a new server.
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Proof of Concept
This tool or step is where the structure of the business’s new cloud is designed. This includes setting up servers, services, and data migration, along with tests to see how long these processes will take. Pre-problem solving is key here. A good cloud enablement strategy includes plans for things going not according to plan. This is imperative given the cost and risks that extended downtime poses for a company. However, downtime may be unavoidable, so the length of the downtime is predicted. This will allow a business to plan, and let their customers know ahead of time. Good communication between the team implementing the cloud enablement and the business’s developers is key.
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Automation
Now comes the fun part. The next tool for solid cloud enablement is to automate certain parts of the business’s infrastructure through either scripting or a provisioning tool. This step of the process involves working closely with the business’s developers. Part of this step in cloud enablement includes the Infrastructure as Code model. Within this model, a description of the cloud stack is created, along with the overall structure of the environment, or environments. This is where descriptions of their cloud infrastructure are created, and any changes necessary are made. Here it is easy to add other services or servers should the need arise, without the need for any manual work. While this is the automation step, testing is done manually as well as automatically, and this shows if there is any need to make changes to the code itself.
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Maintenance
Once the entire cloud enablement, or migration, is complete and everything is working well, the next step is to simply maintain what’s been built. It is important to have in-house maintenance support or to continue with the company that helped your business with its cloud enablement. There are generally two options for maintaining cloud enablement when it’s outsourced: twenty-four-seven monitoring or support on an as-needed basis. Talk to your in-house IT team and see what they think would be the best setup for your cloud maintenance.
Encora Can Lead Your Business Through Cloud Enablement
Are you ready to reap the cost and efficiency benefits that come with cloud enablement? Encora is here to help! Their teams of software engineers have years of experience helping companies just like yours migrating safely and smoothly to a cloud environment. Cloud enablement comes with so many advantages. Let them help you navigate any potential stumbling blocks and avoid or minimize downtime with their expertise and skill. To get started on your migration towards lower costs and better efficiency, reach out to Encora today!
