Increasing numbers of businesses are shifting their on-site data centers to the cloud platform thanks to the impressive level of efficiency, flexibility, scalability, security, performance and affordability of the latter. However, there are a number of challenges that business enterprises face during the actual application migration process to the cloud servers. This might drive their investment over the planned budget. Sometimes the applications might not be optimized before migration or there might be several different details that were ignored in the planning stage which creates complications during the migration process.
Fortunately, business owners can now learn more about the migration process and know the various tips for cloud migration cost savings.
What is the Cost of Cloud Migration?
According to tech experts, there are significant costs for maintaining and using on-site data centers. Apart from the cost of buying updated hardware and software equipment, software licenses, support, etc frequently, there is also a noticeable cost of maintaining your growing IT infrastructure.
In contrast, when business owners decide to move their application data to the cloud platform, the company will have to pay a lump sum amount however it eventually pays off in the long run.
To know an accurate estimate of the total cost of migration to the cloud platform, you will need to consider the cost of configuring the system, prepping it for deployment and integrating it into the cloud applications, training IT staff members and users, etc.
According to a study by Forrester, the cost of labor (migration, installation and maintenance staff) makes up a majority from the complete cost of the migration process. Hence, the total cost of the cloud migration process is affected by the method of data and application transfer you choose. The cost of a simple lift-and-shift migration process is considerably less. On the other hand, if you choose to redesign and modify your application codes as the migration process progresses, then the cost gets gradually higher. In addition to the migration process cost, you also need to consider the cost of regular expenses for maintaining your data on the cloud, which includes paying subscription fees and charges for configuration changes, etc.
How’s the Cloud Migration Process Done?
Migration to the cloud involves various processes and their different budgets, mostly depending on the method of migration being used – Cloud as a Transition or Cloud to Transform.
In Cloud as a Transition method, the existing IT applications are shifted in their current state on to the cloud platform.
In the Cloud to Transform method, the application’s codes need to be modified and require using a new product even. There are significant risks in this method however there are several competitive advantages of this method too which remarkably boosts your business agility.
Once you choose any of the two migration methods, you will need to evaluate the current environment of your project in order to design a practically applicable and effective plan for migration. This plan should identify the path of migration of every component in your on-site data center. You can choose between cloud-native migration, lift-and-shift migration and re-factoring migration approaches.
The final step in planning requires you to choose the best-suited cloud products and design a feasible budget for the migration process.
Top Tips for Cloud Migration Cost Savings
According to our IT experts, here is a list of effective and excellent tips that can help you to save significant cost for your application migration process:
1 – Start trimming your cloud infrastructure from the get-go
To do this, you need to determine the level of minimum and optimal performance in the initial stages of planning and then choose a cloud service provider with the lowest fees. It is important to consider the user perspective and cut down the workloads according to the actual performance needs, instead of simply copy-pasting on-site infrastructure to the cloud platform.
Once in the cloud platform, you should analyze the computing services being used and regulate them according to specific needs.
2 – Choose reserved instances for workloads that are predictable and stable
The majority of cloud service provider allows customers to reserve capacity in the initial stage at a significantly affordable price. Thus, if you are sure that there will be no noticeable peaks or falls in utilization capacity for certain instances, then you can reserve the instance accordingly at a significant discount. This ensures that you have plenty of power for your applications at the lowest possible cost.
3 – Select managed services and cut down on their expenses
Although many cloud service providers do not provide user support, you will need to be prepared to manage them yourself or you can choose to use managed services. According to IT experts, choosing reliable third-party vendors for managing cloud services costs significantly less to the cost of hiring and maintaining your own IT team.
Conclusion
Cloud services are getting increasingly popular among small and large businesses alike. The ease of scalability and drastic improvement in customer service are the major driving factors for this choice. You too can make the move to cloud technology in an affordable way with these tips for cloud migration cost savings.