Over 61% of companies worldwide have seen the benefits of cloud storage and moved their operations online. When a business shifts some or all of its information centers to the cloud, this is called “cloud migration.” This gives the company’s data a lot of benefits, like making it safer and more reliable.
By 2023, cloud platforms will be used by 75% of all company databases. If you want to move your business to the cloud for the first time, you need to know the right steps. In this article, we’ll talk about why moving your data to the cloud is important and show you how to do it.
Migration to the cloud is important
Making sure your customers are happy and giving them a better experience are important steps toward business success. Cloud migration lets you turn your business into a digital one, giving you mobile access, flexible tools, and a better experience for your customers. Aside from letting your clients and employees use your services from anywhere, moving your data to the cloud has other benefits, such as:
improved access
Accessibility means ensuring that as many people can find and use your company’s services. Most modern businesses try to be flexible and easy to use to fit into the markets. This can’t happen if your data warehouse infrastructure doesn’t let you work from anywhere.
You need a way for people to access and work from afar and for operations to take place in many different countries worldwide. If you move your details to the cloud, you will be able to reach more possible clients. Control features let you decide who can see what data and what they can do with it.
Even though many clients and employees can access this data simultaneously, the access control features ensure that data integrity is not compromised. You don’t have to trouble about your data being unfinished, inconsistent, or wrong.
More Data Storage
One of the main causes why businesses are moving to the cloud is because they can store more data and have more options. You can pay as you go for cloud data, which means you only pay for your use. You can easily add more storage space when you need it and take it away when you don’t need it anymore. This saves money that could have been spent on storage devices that your company might not need in the future.
Scalability and Flexibility
A cloud data warehouse is built with and around modern businesses in mind. This architecture lets companies change how they use their resources to meet the changing needs of their business. For example, seasons, safety, and weather change greatly impact the tourism industry. Tourism companies will need more computer power than usual during busy times to improve their analytics.
Using so much computing power during slow times isn’t necessary because you only need a small amount of processing power. With the cloud data warehouse, a company with seasonal or changing needs can save money by only paying for the funds when they are needed.
Better performance
On a cloud data platform, we usually have several servers that work together to handle the work. These many servers make it possible to store a lot of data and process it quickly and without delays simultaneously. There are different ways to process data for each department.
For example, a marketing department might need to determine the best strategies by looking at the data. It needs a different kind of data for the customer support system to analyze client feedback and make the necessary changes. With a modern cloud data warehouse, all of an organization’s departments can access the most relevant data and make decisions based on facts.
Improved Integration
A study found that for business intelligence and analytics, companies use more than 400 sources of data. When data comes from different sources, it will be in different formats and structures, which makes it very hard to combine.
This important data would be stuck in silos if there weren’t good ways to connect them, leading to poor analytics. If you move to the cloud, combining data from different sources will be easy. The results will give you a clear picture of what your organization does and how it works, leading to better analytics.
Improved Recovery from Disaster
Companies that use legacy data platforms spend a lot of money making backups of their data in case something goes wrong. They also need more skills to keep this backup data safe and limit who can access it. If you move to the cloud, you can avoid all of these problems.
A cloud storage platform will automatically back up data regularly to ensure that a disaster will have few effects. You don’t have to acquire costly hardware and storage spaces for your backup. Just adhere to a solution and appreciate the automatic data recovery.
Stages to Transfer Your Data to the Cloud
The idea of moving data into a cloud data warehouse. When employed doing things a certain way at work, it is hard to change and start using a new method. It would help if you handled the change professionally to enjoy the benefits of the cloud with as small a disruption to your business as possible. Here are the seven most important steps you need to take to move and store your data in the cloud:
Understanding the Company’s Needs to Drive the Migration
It will assist if you start by figuring out why your business needs to move. This will involve figuring out what parts stand to gain from the change and how they will gain. Follow your data to figure out your information, how to get to it, where it is, and what problems you are difficult to solve. Knowing how your business works and what information you already have will help you choose the best solution.
Conduct a SWOT Analysis
SWOT is an acronym for Power, Possibilities, Weaknesses, and Threats. This analysis is one of the best and most organized ways to determine where your company stands. Write down your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. For example, if you rush an online store and your biggest risk is losing data, and your biggest weakness is data security, it’s easy to figure out that you need to move your information to the cloud as soon as possible to make it safer and more reliable.
Identify Application Migration Candidates
After doing the SWOT analysis, you know where to focus and which applications need to be changed. You should know why you are shifting to the cloud, which will help you decide what to do first. Start with the areas where you stand to gain the most and figure out how.
Examine the numbers
This means the cost of making the change. Once you know your priorities, figure out how much it will cost to move. Since you know what you want now and what you’ll get out of it, it’s easy to compare this to the costs and decide if the move is right. Calculating the space you need, the amount of data you create, and the service level agreements (SLAs) you might need will help you find a solution that fits your needs and budget.
Pick the Right Spouse
The right cloud partner works within your budget and meets your needs. You want to find a partner with real-world experience in an industry similar to yours and who can better understand your needs and problems. For example, ClicData is a cloud data platform with a cloud data warehouse built to make it easier to move and manage data for analytics and reporting. So, it will make it easy for you to change.
Organize Your Move
As you move, make it a priority to cause your team as little trouble as possible. Check your schedule and decide when the best time is for you to move. Also, figure out the order of the changes and set some deadlines to ensure the process goes quickly enough to get your business back to normal as soon as possible. It is also important to know how the end-user will be affected by the migration and if they need any training to keep getting your services.
Observe Your Operations
You should keep an eye on how things are going and be ready to fix any problems. Make copies of everything in case the new system breaks down. Don’t forget that your users are fresh to the console and can easily make mistakes.