Top 5 Cloud Migration Considerations: Inside the Pivot

Cloud Migration, Inside the Pivot is a new podcast, report series, and binge event program from the Decision Acceleration Cloud focused on telling real-world stories of people that are in the process of moving from an on-premise software/infrastructure environment to the cloud.

This first introductory podcast gives a bit of context on “where to start,” with some guidance on the questions to ask, including:

Data: how sensitive is the data that sits on-premise? What does it consist of? Employee, partner, customer, supplier data, corporate IP and more needs to be considered during this transition.
Data Readiness: what forms does that data reside in? Is it structured in databases or unstructured in applications, email, or web-based documents? Preparing this data, using discovery tools, and finding the right migration partners here is key.
Hybrid options: this concept has gotten trendy (as have others in the space) but as the data discovery process takes place, it is smart to consider “if” certain data is best left on-premise vs going into the cloud. There is no rule that says “everything” needs to be in the cloud. It is worth having these discussions, considering the privacy of certain data vs the critical nature of the data to run the business (availability), and make some educated decisions.
Security: with multiple cybersecurity attacks happening through cloud-based data, many of which very publicized, the question becomes less about 100% security and more about risk mitigation when moving to the cloud. The most important thing to realize is that each organization needs to ensure their own security measures are added to their cloud strategy–issues like access control, encryption and more need to be “owned” by the company moving their data to the cloud; do not just assume the cloud service provider (CSP) will handle this, because the responsibility and accountability is that of the company.
Who gets access to what: this is incredibly important based on regulatory compliance issues within specific vertical markets as well as regions where the organization has employees and does business.

As the Cloud Migration, Inside the Pivot content series continues, we will be exploring all of these issues in more detail as we also bring in real-world business technology leaders to describe what has worked and (even more importantly) what has not in their cloud migrations.

If you would like to learn more about this project, please connect with online editor Bridget Courneya (bridget.courneya@dynamiccommunities.com)–we are always looking for folks “inside the pivot” who would like to join us in taking this complex issue and just making it a little bit easier for people to manage through.