The change to the home format of work has become the standard for enterprises all over the world. The cloud is gaining an increasing number of adherents and is becoming an even more important IT tool for business. The pandemic, lockdowns and work from home increased the urgency with which businesses required transformation, and the cloud became a key factor contributing to this.
Migration to the cloud is a process that involves moving the IT infrastructure to the capacity of cloud services. Every year more and more companies are switching to such a solution. Its advantages are obvious: there are no restrictions on loads, there are no difficulties with adding new projects. Constant updating of services allows you to instantly respond to new business requirements.
How does the migration to the cloud happen, what migration options exist and how is it performed?
Why migrate to Cloud
Source: rvtdesk.com
The cloud is a special service that provides access to a specific set of resources for solving specific tasks. Most companies use cloud services for remote access and gradually transfer all business processes there.
The use of Cloud services allows you to reduce the cost of money and time for administration, provides flexibility of tasks and control over peak loads. And these are not all the advantages of transferring business processes to the cloud.
Migration of information systems is a fairly popular phenomenon in the world market. Corporations such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google have already abandoned storing data on their servers. In the coming years, this list will only expand.
The main thing in this new world, with these new views, is not to lose the basic understanding of what you need, why you need it and how you need it. After all, clouds are not some magical solution to all your problems, but an optimal set of tools that can flexibly and effectively help your business in such digital transformation.
Often, cloud migration includes the IT infrastructure assessment and optimization. One of the most popular software providers which cover project and task management is Atlassian. Jira and Confluence Cloud versions allow your teams to work together seamlessly, no matter where the team members are located geographically.
Atlassian products are available at Data Center and Cloud hosting
Recently Atlassian refused Server licenses, but Data Center has the same functionality as Server. It’s more complicated to implement, but it boosts reliability due to the simultaneous maintenance of several application instances – several parallel nodes.
Compared with Data Center, Cloud doesn’t require any installation or server maintenance. You can work on your projects via cloud drive and web interface no matter where you and your teammates are located. Atlassian gives access to its servers, thus, offering a quick start to the teams.
How to plan Cloud migration
Companies decide to migrate to the cloud for various reasons. Most often, this is done to optimize costs and scale, run applications with powerful performance and redistribute workloads.
Assess and plan
Source: medium.com
To decide on the transfer of services, first of all, you need to assess the capacity and type of infrastructure that the company needs. To do this, a list of necessary services is compiled and the computing power required for the correct operation of each of them is estimated.
At this step it’s also essential to review the software your teams use. Jira and Confluence from Atlassian cover any aspects of ITSM / ITIL practices and let the teams work together:
- Jira Core for project management. No more daily meetings and reports: all precious data is stored in one place, helping to see the “big picture” and track your team’s progress.
- Jira Service Desk for request and incident management, and to provide instant communication between business and the end-customer.
- Confluence for content and knowledge management. Perfect to store and share all gained experience on the cloud, creating a unified knowledge base.
Prepare
The next step is to determine the method of data transfer and the convenient time for its execution. Usually, this procedure is performed by the data center, as it allows you to upgrade services and perform migration in a seamless way-that is, without suspending business processes.
Evaluate the data
Source: lgnetworksinc.com
The process of evaluating data before migrating to the cloud is a practice that any enterprise should perform in a standard manner, regardless of the size of this data. This is an important process that helps organizations stay up to date with data management practices and contributes to strengthening security. Regular data evaluation allows the enterprise to use the correct methods of data classification; classify and organize data to ensure their most effective and efficient use and get rid of unnecessary or outdated or banal (ROT) data.
Data and processes migration
Data classification encourages enterprises to make decisions about which data should be saved and which should be disposed of. Why is this so important?
Before you start migrating to the cloud, you should perform a general data cleaning. First you need to clean the Server version of everything unnecessary, whether it’s outdated data, unused applications or users. If you have fewer data to store, then you will have to pay less for storage, and the migration process will go much simpler.
What about plugins?
Normally, cloud migration implies the transformation of the whole infrastructure including all software and additional plugins. Atlassian and plugin vendors make changes to their products almost every day, so users won’t have to refuse using already known and tested plugins for Jira and Confluence.
Options of migration
Source: teahub.io
There are 2 main scenarios for transferring services to the cloud system:
1. Full migration
This means that the created infrastructure is transferred to the cloud: existing data, used applications, saved settings, etc. At the same time, it is necessary to save or recreate the terminal stations through which the company’s employees will get access to the services. This method is usually chosen by small and medium-sized businesses that have a fairly simple IT infrastructure. The data is transferred and configured in a couple of days. The approach has minimal risks, requires minimal resources to perform, but it does not always allow you to use the capabilities of the cloud service 100%.
2. Partial migration to the cloud
This is a hybrid model that involves transferring only a fraction of information resources and systems to the cloud service. Some services remain on the organization’s own physical capacities for safety. This model is often chosen by organizations for testing cloud technologies and working with them. If the partial migration results are satisfactory, all the information is transferred to the new virtual platform in stages. The so-called roadmap of migration procedures is being compiled, which allows you to transfer services without delaying business processes. This option is suitable for a large company with several remote offices.
Choose the right service provider
Cloud migration can be challenging. To relieve you from server administration, offer more flexible payment schemes, and automate updates of your Atlassian products, you can address Cloud migration service providers like Polontech.com. This company believes that people are the company’s most valuable asset, so they offer affordable and easy-to-use solutions that remain valuable to the customers.
Most of the worldwide companies choose Atlassian products for reorganization and optimization of their IT infrastructure. So at first, when planning migration to the cloud, it’s important to choose the most optimal set of tools according to your business needs and create a powerful IT service and request management system.
