As we continue into part four of our cloud migration timeline, let us take the time to look back at the first 3 stages of your potential new cloud environment. Stage one was all about assessing your companies’ goals and initiatives based around a new cloud strategy. Stage two was built around determining the strategic direction you wanted your business to take when implementing the cloud. Stage three, we spoke about some of the factors that shouldn’t be overlooked when adopting a cloud strategy, things like the timeline, implementation and proper planning.

In this segment, we will develop our understanding of our Cloud Architecture and Design. The main goal within this stage is to make the service simple, while consistently improving its functions. During this phase, infrastructure standards must also be introduced and applied. Specific controls like audit levels, compliance requirements, guidelines, rules and other policies should be implemented, monitored and maintained throughout the initial stages. However, they should also be dynamic, changes should be made proactively. Dedicating the proper amount of time to this stage of the process will prove to be valuable to completing the migration.

A key component to your cloud migration is the integration factor. You want your system to be able to work alongside and with other tools you may already employ within your environment. You should be organizing possible integration points for some of your legacy applications however, integrating these systems does not mean starting over, you may have invested large amounts into these systems and the correct cloud-strategy can incorporate your existing systems to work alongside today’s modern technology. Simply adding a cloud-based model can prepare you for the coming changes within your IT environment, making changes easier and keeping your business ahead of the curve.

Beyond integration, you may run into difficulties along the way, outages and downtime may occur. We suggest having a plan in place to deal with either issue. Doing so will prevent the incident from lasting too long and affecting your daily operations. Solutions or fixes can be managed by third-party providers many of which can take the problems off your hands entirely.

Key takeaway from Part 4 of our Cloud Road-map:

1. Develop a design to integrate your current infrastructure with a cloud strategy.
2. Take the time to understand and establish Cloud guidelines and organization.
3. Plan for set-backs. Build and enable partnerships to help manage any issues.