By Joel Snape | Cybersecurity Researcher at Nettitude

In our previous blog post for the ‘Cybersecurity and the Cloud’ series, we looked at what considerations should be made when considering migrating to the cloud. To follow on, the next step is to establish a strategy for how you are going to migrate your business over to a cloud platform.

There are a number of options to choose from when considering what cloud platform provider you are going to go with. From public cloud spaces to private, community and hybrid; each one has its own benefits and drawbacks and establishing which one is best for your company will depend on the way you will be using it and what for. In order to ensure you select the right platform for your businesses needs, it is essential to establish a clear cloud migration strategy.

In this post, we’ll discuss the five key steps to take in order to create an effective cloud migration strategy.

Are you keeping stakeholders' access in mind?

One of the most crucial questions to ask when considering what cloud platform to go with is ‘who needs to have access?’. Start by sketching a mind map of all the parties involved in your business, from internal staff to partners, contractors, freelancers, suppliers and clients.

There are four types of cloud deployment models to choose from, including public, private, community and hybrid in which the option you go for will be determined by who needs to have access, as well as a number of other factors. This is important to keep in mind as you move through the planning stages of your strategy.

What business objectives are driving your cloud adoption?

Understanding and defining your business outcomes and justifications means that it is possible to make the right technology choices. Many larger organisations are driven to migrate to the cloud by wanting to replace on-premise legacy technology, whilst on the other hand, many SMEs are driven by improving business continuity, as well as decreasing the cost of ownership. Below is a general list of reasons why many organisations want to migrate to the cloud -

• Lower total cost of ownership (TCO)
• Enabling business continuity
• Speed of development
• Replacing on-premise legacy technology
• Improving customer support or services
• Reducing resource waste
• Savings on CAPEX (capital expenditures)
• Greater flexibility to react to changing market conditions
• Enabling innovation
• Development of new products or services
• Gaining a competitive edge
• Need for real-time information
• Expanding revenue opportunities
• Faster return on investment

What is your preferred (‘default’) cloud services model?

The next step is to determine which cloud services model would suit your organisation best. On one end of the spectrum, an on-premises cloud solution would require complete in-house maintenance, whereas a SaaS (Software as a Service) model is completely managed by the cloud provider. The below diagram breaks down the different cloud service models and the different responsibilities of each one -

Are there other business changes that are dependent on or are enabled by a move to cloud infrastructure?

There are many benefits to your business of migrating to the cloud, however, one of the main benefits is the ease of access. In today’s day and age, it’s essential that businesses adapt to the changing needs of their workers, in which remote working is becoming an increasingly popular box that must be ticked on an applicants list when they are looking for a prospective employer. It’s also essential for businesses that operate in a number of locations or countries.

Benefits include - making it easier for staff and stakeholders to access files from a central location, enabling the retrieval of lost data, enhanced project collaboration – this is particularly useful to businesses that operate in more than one country, more manageable file version control, workplace and time flexibility, and enhanced security.

Are there any parts of your business that restrict or are not well-served by cloud adoption?

Whilst there are many benefits of migrating to the cloud, there can be a certain amount of challenges to overcome, from compliance issues to deciding who will manage your cloud facilities, lack of in-house expertise and security concerns.

Nettitude are well equipped to help with these types of concerns and are experienced in facilitating organisations to come up with viable solutions to such challenges. Whether you are looking to reduce the attack surface of your new cloud environment, or your organisation lacks the in-house expertise needed to create and implement an effective cloud migration strategy; our trained experts can provide consultancy services to help guide you towards the best-placed solution for your business. In addition, we work with a range of cloud solutions partners who are able to provide efficient cloud solution services.

The above five steps are a great starting point in establishing your cloud migration strategy and when broken down into these simple steps, they can make the complex task a little easier. However, as mentioned above, migrating to the cloud is not a simple task and many businesses find they are not equipped to handle the move by themselves. If this sounds like you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the team for non-committal expert advice.

Look out for the next post in our cloud series - Cybersecurity and the Cloud Series – NIST Cybersecurity framework and cloud adoption.

View our full cloud research report here.