More and more companies are migrating segments or the entire business to the cloud. The cloud provides great benefits such as the ability to work anywhere, enhanced security, mitigating risks pertaining to a physical building, and greater flexibility and scale. There are questions companies should be asking of our software and IT providers before making this jump:
- Will my application work the same in the cloud?
- What will the performance be?
- How do I access the cloud?
- Can we “go back” to our existing environment easily if it doesn’t work out?
Companies should spend an extensive time testing the cloud environment BEFORE their live data is completely migrated. Testing will flush out many common issues with cloud migrations such as workflow disruptions, performance, and general UI differences. We have seen countless companies migrate to the cloud without testing and many of them end up unhappy with the result.
One of the first questions a company should ask is if they can migrate back to their current infrastructure if the cloud solution doesn’t work. Not having an easy road back can be potentially damaging for a company if issues with a cloud environment are disruptive to their workflow.
Performance changes can also occur when migrating to the cloud. Functions such as printing, scanning, or interfacing with other local resources can be slower when using a cloud application. These functions should be tested before the migration.
- Marc Umstead, President, Plus 1 Technology
