New data from a recent HyTrust/OnePoll survey show continued migration to cloud computing platforms. Respondents in financial services (82 percent), information research and analysis (81 percent), technology (79 percent) and healthcare (77 percent) overwhelmingly affirmed their plans to move additional workloads to the cloud in 2016.Of course, getting to the cloud isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. Organizations need to identify the business and IT objectives to be gained, and the architectural and operational changes needed to achieve those goals.
That’s why a cloud assessment is imperative for any cloud adoption strategy. By examining your existing IT infrastructure, applications and services, you can ensure that your cloud strategy will be aligned with your business and technology strategies. The information gathered and analyzed during the assessment will also lay the foundation for cloud adoption, reducing risk and making the move more efficient.
Systems, applications and data need to be reviewed and possibly re-architected to ensure that they continue to meet user expectations for performance and availability when migrated to the cloud.
Because a high level of virtualization is a prerequisite for building a cloud , it may be necessary to expand and optimize your virtualized environment. Moving from virtualization to a cloud model requires automation software that accelerates the deployment of services, increases agility, and ensures optimal network performance while reducing costs. Orchestration tools should also be used to optimize workloads and accelerate the delivery of applications and services. This will enable you to simplify maintenance, maximize resource utilization, and automate provisioning and change management according to policies, service levels and best practices.
The network infrastructure used to access the cloud must be evaluated in a number of areas. The network should have adequate security, performance, reliability and bandwidth. These layers of technology require the right management tools in order to prevent IT from becoming bogged down with day-to-day administration, monitoring and configuration tasks.
Many organizations are finding that a hybrid cloud strategy utilizing a combination of private and public cloud services offers the best way to meet IT and business goals. A cloud assessment will help you determine which applications belong in which type of cloud. And because a hybrid cloud requires IT to embrace the role of service broker rather than infrastructure builder, a cloud assessment can help prepare IT for this role.
Technologent provides comprehensive cloud readiness assessments that include technical discovery, cloud infrastructure design, and TCO and ROI analyses. We also have deep expertise in key public and private cloud platforms and strategic partnerships with leading cloud providers. Let us help you build the business case for cloud migration and execute on your migration strategy.
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