Since the advent of cloud computing about two decades ago, businesses of all sizes, geographies and industries are turning to technology to drive growth, productivity and profit. This is largely due to the limitations of traditional IT infrastructure and the benefits that migrating to the cloud has to offer for SMBs and large scale businesses.
Type of cloud architecture
When it comes to migrating to the cloud, there are three architecture models to choose from:
Private cloud: In this architecture model the infrastructure is dedicated to a single client, meaning all resources are shared internally. The biggest advantage is that it allows for a high level of security and a sense of complete ownership.
Public cloud: Public clouds are represented by third-party cloud service providers who offer cloud services to millions of customers. The major attraction is the low cost of computing resources.
Hybrid cloud: This model offers high security associated with private cloud and the low cost that the public cloud offers.
The most popular type of infrastructure today is the public cloud. When you migrate to AWS, Azure or GCP, this architecture offers a flexible option that allows you to pay only for the services you need while enjoying high data security.
Why businesses migrate to the cloud
If you’re wondering why businesses migrate to the cloud in droves, here are some of the key reasons:
Cost effectiveness
Perhaps, the most significant reason for businesses to migrate to the cloud in 2021 is the cost reduction it offers. With cloud migration enterprises don’t have to devote a sizable chunk of their budgetary allocations to setting up, managing and upgrading their IT systems. This drastically reduces CaPex costs.
On-premise to cloud migration means that businesses won’t have to worry about the costs of running their own IT infrastructure, which includes hardware, software, energy, space, personnel and more. These costs will be transferred to the service provider while you pay only for the services you need at the moment.
Instant scalability
Owning and operating your own data center comes with different challenges and one of them is that you make elaborate plans when you need to expand the operations of your business. You will need to buy, install and configure a new server, and also hire new staff to handle the increased workload. This makes it difficult to scale up. With cloud scalability is no longer a problem as you can scale up or down in an instant without having to forecast how many servers you need. In this way, clouds provide increased agility and cost-effective resourcing.
Competitive advantage
Admittedly, some businesses are reluctant to migrate to the cloud for different reasons, at least not yet. While it’s their decision to make, businesses that choose to keep everything local place themselves at a distinct disadvantage as they will find it difficult to compete against businesses that have migrated to the cloud. Businesses that implement a cloud-based solution find that many benefits the cloud offers positively impact their business. If you want to stay ahead of your competitors, cloud migration is the right step to take.
High availability
Server failure is one of the biggest nightmares of any business, because it means operations will grind to a halt. Businesses that run an on-site IT infrastructure are highly at risk of downtime, and getting back online can be challenging and even be a long-winded process. The benefit of using clouds in this regard is that they eliminate the risks of server failure as the cloud is designed to deliver predictable and consistent performance with guaranteed 100 percent uptime. This way, the cloud ensures business continuity despite unexpected challenges.
Lightning-fast performance
There are a few things as detrimental to a business as a slow performance, which is typically caused by the use of obsolete hardware and software. In contrast, the cloud offers a speedy performance, which can be attributed to the use of powerful servers with technology such as powerful CPUs and super-fast SSD drives. Because service providers have different servers to cater to the needs of businesses, the load can be distributed so no single server suffers from performance problems, thus ensuring that performance is consistently optimized.
Increased security
One of the misconceptions many organizations have about cloud migration is that it is a risky move in that the cloud is not as secure as on-premise IT infrastructure. However, that notion is false as the cloud boasts better security because providers are required to comply with stringent regulations and industry standards to ensure data protection. Examples of measures put in place to forestall unauthorized access to your data include the use of a robust firewall, two-factor authentication, advanced encryption, in-flow virus protection, etc. And you can even choose to adopt the multi-cloud infrastructure approach to guard against data loss.
Flexibility and mobility
Another reason to embrace cloud migration products is that they transforms the way employees work. Since the cloud is an Internet-based technology, your team can work both in and out of the workplace. Cloud allows access to systems and critical data from anywhere in the world from mobile devices such as smartphones and laptops. This makes it possible for your staff to communicate and collaborate on projects from different locations. You can also use the cloud to give contractors and third parties access to the same data.
Disaster recovery and backup solutions
Physical machines are hard to backup and restore. If you want to have a disaster recovery solution, you need to have some spare resources being available at any time for a failover. With public clouds you can just pay for the DR software and run a failover taking more instances in a public cloud.
Insight
As the old adage goes, “knowledge is power.” Companies that want to remain profitable and stay competitive in today’s world of business must leverage the massive amount of data about their customers. Although many businesses have millions of bits of data at their disposal, they are unable to process and act on them because they lack the necessary tech.
Conclusion
At the moment, many businesses are moving their data to the cloud due to the numerous benefits it offers for smooth business operations. Although cloud migration offers plenty of benefits to businesses, the process can be quite complicated and requires a detailed cloud migration strategy. Thus, you need to choose the right company for your cloud migration.
Nick Smirnov, FinOps and digital transformation enthusiast, CEO at Hystax
