Moving to the cloud: Why you need an experienced digital partner to migrate with confidence
Successful brands are built to react rapidly to changing demands. That way they can be sure that their offering, whether it’s finance, pharmaceuticals or automotive, never goes out of style with their customers. To do this, businesses must cultivate total flexibility and scalability across departments, from their product offering, communications and internal culture, to their infrastructure and data management.
It’s no surprise then that leading brands are taking action to future proof their infrastructure by moving to the cloud. Gartner estimates that by 2022, up to 60% of organizations will use an external service provider’s cloud-managed service offering, a figure that’s doubled since 2018.
There’s a seismic shift taking place. Dynamic brands are moving away from hardware-reliant premise setups in which data centers are often located locally, with applications running on dedicated servers - towards hardware-free, endlessly scalable, public cloud infrastructures like Azure, AWS or Adobe Managed Services.
Cloud computing might seem like a no-brainer to realize a modern digital strategy. But some brands still aren’t running on cloud technology. So what’s standing in their way?
Migration deliberation for cloud adopters and how to overcome them
Firstly, there’s the security issue. A recent survey found that 75% of enterprises are ‘highly concerned’ about public cloud security. Given sensitive customer information is being transferred from dedicated data servers to a repository outside the realm of the corporation, security is a key pain point that hinders cloud adoption for many.
However, third-party cloud providers are responsible for constant security monitoring. When combined with the ability to encrypt data being transmitted over networks or stored in data lakes within the cloud, many brands actually enhance their data security with a cloud solution.
Then there’s the cost involved. Transforming an enterprise’s infrastructure is a sizable investment and intimidating for some. It’s not just the solution itself, but the resources needed to train the entire company to achieve the full ROI of the new solution too.
Despite the initial investment, cloud-hosted infrastructure is likely to add value and reduce costs in the long-term by enabling slicker collaboration, and more effective and innovative ways of processing data. What’s more, most businesses only pay for the cloud capacity they need at any given moment, a sharp contrast to inflexible local solutions that come with heavy maintenance and operational costs.
Finally, the migration process can be complex. Brands today work with high volumes of data, and migration might involve terabytes of information. Seamlessly transferring that vast amount of data to the cloud is intimidating at best and a deterrent at worst, especially when it comes to highly complex setups with a plethora of integrations, hundreds of domains, redirects and SSL certificates.
In fact, moving to the cloud could be beneficial for the health of an organization’s data. In a cloud-based system, information from multiple business silos can be stored in a single hub that standardizes and quality-checks that data, making it more actionable and more valuable in an instant.
The expertise to design and execute ‘bulletproof’ migration plans
Cloud migrations involve a number of moving parts. That’s why the key to success is a thorough, watertight plan to ensure the customer experience isn’t compromised and vast data sets can be transferred to their new cloud repository without security issues.
That’s where Netcentric can help
At Netcentric, we specialize in helping large enterprises move to the cloud with confidence. No single migration is the same: that’s why understanding brands’ pre-existing repositories, data management and infrastructural needs is key. Our discovery phase lifts the lid on the legacy solution first, which allows us to build a migration plan that gives our clients a roadmap for their journey to the cloud.
Next, rigorous migration tests help us to ensure our approach is solid, secure and seamless. The infrastructure must always be in place well in advance of the migration so it can be fully tested and optimized where needed. Then, the migration itself can take place.
The result is an infrastructure that gives brands the scalability to help them evolve quickly and meet ever-changing customer expectations. Without hardware support contracts, upgrades or renewals, costs can be cut and streamlined through pay-as-you-go customizable packages tailored to specific business needs. The cloud also offers greater optimization potential, and additional features to support business growth so companies can be sure their infrastructure is match-ready not just for today’s challenges - but future ones too.
Let’s talk about the cloud
At Netcentric, we’ll ensure your journey to the cloud goes seamlessly. Our experts run virtual pain point workshops so you can identify and solve your potential migration challenges quickly and efficiently. By using our proven double diamond approach, multiple pain points can be identified and solutions can be developed in just half a day. Moving to the cloud might seem daunting at first, but together we can help you overcome the complexity and make migration a success.