If an IT organization believes that migrating your on-premise data assets and workloads to the cloud will only be a lift-and-shift process, they are in for a surprise. Businesses are turning towards the cloud for all the amazing reasons. It is clearly a much more appealing option as compared to on-premises infrastructure, mainly due to its ability to scale, respond to changes in workload, provision on-demand resources, and has elastic capabilities. But in no way, it's a lift-and-shift procedure that does not require any preparation or planning. Migrating on the cloud may not be the most complex process on earth, but it sure needs proper forecasting, planning, and reconfiguration of services and infrastructure to utilize the cloud at its maximum capacity.
If you have chosen Azure to be your ultimate cloud platform, it is best to offer Azure training and certification such as Azure fundamentals and developing Azure solutions to your cloud migration team to turn them into cloud management powerhouses. The skills and knowledge they learn will enable them to fully harness the features and benefits of the Azure cloud platform. Training helps IT organizations to shift their focus on efficiency, operations, and resourcing and how to pay proper attention to storage, computing report, network transfer, and databases at a more powerful scale. Organizations that do not focus on Azure training and certification fail to experience the significance of the Azure cloud platform and the benefits a seamless cloud migration can over. Moreover, they may also experience significant costs and overages that clearly outweigh the results that are originally planned for.
With training, the cloud migration team is in a better position to make the most out of newer technologies such as vendor and container discounts, savings, and increased efficiency.
Cloud Migration Best Practices for Cloud Management Powerhouses
Not only this, but Azure training ensures your cloud migration team is fully prepared with the best practices for migrating applications to the cloud more confidently and quickly. While every organization has different business objectives and structure, there are certain practices and patterns the team should learn that implements on all kinds of businesses.
Here are the top ones to make the transition successful and less hassle.
Plan it Out
Set up a clear vision for IT and how you see it in the future. Your current vision will influence your organization's strategy and will be translated into each step. Having a clear mind at this point ensures why the strategy is imperative to the organization.
Establish a Cloud Governance Model
Describe the individual roles and responsibilities for each team without compromising on the information security considerations of your organizations. These two strategies hand-in-hand can help you meet great business objectives. It also allows you to handle the right of controls to ensure further security. However, you must be answerable to a lot of questions before letting in the internal users for cloud services.
Here are some questions that will help you draft a clear governance model for the cloud:
- How many accounts should you have?
- How will you grant access to the authorities and on what basis?
- How will the users consume the services you offer on clouds?
Answering these questions with relevance to your business can improve your approach with cloud governance model.
Focus on Training
As mentioned earlier, training is a crucial aspect that ensures your cloud migration team is ready for the shift. However, it is also equally important to ensure you offer this training early in the process. The more skills, expertise, and knowledge your teams will, the faster and smoother the transition. Offer training to your cloud migration team before you are ready with the organizational-wide decisions of the future of your IT landscape.
Assess Your IT Assets
Assessing will help you learn your IT asset ownership and what you are planning to include in each migration. This calculation will help you measure and quantify the success of your cloud migration. Take your time and discover the right tools to update your app inventory. Also, minimize the risk by streamlining the migration planning effort.
Automate
One of the best ways to experience the agility of the cloud is through automation. Invest time in retesting and revisiting processes to establish the positive ones that you can take maximum advantage of. Naturally, it is not possible to automate all aspects of your cloud migration. Thus, you must be able to determine the processes that you can and do so to empower your team.
Keep It Simple
The trained cloud migration team will find it easier to identify and place the quick wins up on the board. The key is to bring the entire organization on the same page. The more your staff is aware of the Azure platform and its features, the faster they will be able to recognize the benefits. As a result, you do not have to force the organization's vision internally. All you need is transparency and consistency, and you will soon find your cloud migration process a bigger success than you think.
Consistent Monitoring
A cloud migration team trained for the Azure platform will also have a comprehensive monitoring strategy in place beforehand. This strategy will include all the details required for establishing a robust infrastructure for your applications. With data, it becomes easier to access the insights into how well your environment is performing. Monitoring also helps make important decisions to empower the team and the overall business to make a favorable tradeoff between costs and performance.
Test the Applications
A crucial part of the migration process is the validation and integration of the workloads in the cloud. For each application deployed, the components should pass through a series of well-documented and predetermined tests. Ideally, the cloud migration team will set up the best template for application testing. This template should be customized to make the testing more specific to the requirement.
For an organization moving toward a modernize cloud culture, it's best to learn from others' mistake instead of repeating them. The idea is to leverage on that learning and make Microsoft Azure certification a big deal for the cloud migration teams to turn them into management powerhouses.