10 Noteworthy Benefits of Cloud Migration
Recently, we shared our blog, What is Cloud Migration? Process, Strategies and Helpful Tips, discussing the different kinds of cloud migration and strategies for efficient, cost-effective execution. Today, we’re back with more insight surrounding cloud migration, specifically focusing on the benefits it can provide your business.
What is Cloud Migration?
Cloud migration involves moving digital assets to the cloud. This can include applications, workloads, servers, databases, etc., moving from on-prem to the cloud, from one cloud to another or to a hybrid cloud model. Businesses can also opt to move all of their digital assets to the cloud or prioritize some over others.
The Benefits of Cloud Migration
Depending on the needs of your business and the capacity of your migration, the benefits your business will experience from cloud migration may vary. However, many businesses who take the time to thoughtfully plan, execute and optimize their cloud migration can expect to benefit the following ways.
1. Improved Security
Cybersecurity statistics indicate that there are 2,200 cyberattacks per day, with a cyberattack happening every 39 seconds on average. This shoots cybersecurity to the top of business’s and cloud providers’ priority list, and rightfully so.
When done right, undergoing a cloud migration can drastically improve your organization’s security posture by adding an extra layer of protection to your critical applications and workloads. To get to your crown jewels, bad actors will need to infiltrate your organization’s security measures as well as those of your cloud provider. Ultimately, undergoing cloud migration puts an extra security team on your side when facing potential cyber threats.
2. Flexibility
With the prominence of hybrid and remote work, people are collaborating in new and complex ways. Whether it’s sharing documents, transcribing meetings or storing previous conversations, it’s important that the right people are able to access the right information any time from anywhere. Storing it in the cloud enables this level of collaboration, while also leaving room for business optimization.
Cloud migration as offers businesses the opportunity to scale their resources up or down depending on their needs at that current time. Many industries have fluctuating periods where they are busier than others, so this flexibility allows them to cut back on costs when they don’t need to be investing as heavily in their cloud resources.
3. Increased Scalability
In addition to flexibility, cloud migration also empowers businesses to scale more quickly and efficiently. Scaling your business when your key digital assets are already in a cloud environment takes far less time, money and effort than scaling an on-premise infrastructure. Without being locked into contracts, minimum terms and one-size-fits-all solutions, your business can ebb and flow throughout years, or even fiscal quarters, as your needs and goals change.
Investing in physical locations for data centers or storage can be a limiting factor when your business continues to grow into new regions or markets. Migrating to the cloud gives your business enhanced control over your digital assets and the ability to reshape your infrastructure and workloads as necessary, boosting efficiency, productivity and, where applicable, customer satisfaction.
4. Cost Savings
One major perk of cloud migration is increased ROI. However, the cost benefits tend to come sooner than most businesses realize. In fact, companies using cloud computing save 20% annually on infrastructure costs.
Cloud migration drastically reduces operational costs, including physical equipment and staffing, without compromising IT processes or capabilities. Cloud providers, like AWS or Azure, bundle cloud services with the necessary components for long-term success, like security measures, maintenance, upgrades and support. This upfront cost allows you to stop worrying about the auxiliary services that come with your cloud experience.
Beyond initial costs for cloud providers, you’re able to adjust your spend as necessary to optimize the allocation of your IT budget. This leaves room for other areas of the business to continue growing and empowers innovation for your team.
5. Increased Competitive Advantage
The key to boosting your competitive advantage is being one step ahead of the average business in your industry. Cloud migration provides access to newer technologies, best practices and capabilities that will get you ahead of your competitors and more strategically align with key players in your industry. This heightened business agility gives you the opportunity to anticipate changes in the market and adjust accordingly, and the saved cost that cloud migration provides puts your business in a better position to innovate.
6. Opportunity to Improve Customer Satisfaction
When your business operates seamlessly, your customer experience will follow suit. Migrating to the cloud opens up opportunities to improve customer satisfaction from both an internal and external standpoint.
By leveraging the cloud for storing and accessing customer data within your environment, you’re assuring them their information is secure and available at (only) their fingertips. By utilizing cloud technology to build a more flexible user-facing platform for customers to use your services or purchase your products, you’re making their interactions with your business a positive experience, which builds brand loyalty and keeps them coming back for future transactions.
7. Increased Compliance
Keeping your business compliant can feel like a full-time job in addition to the other countless business operations necessary to keep the lights on. Cloud migration opens doors for partnerships with cloud providers, who will make sure that everything you store with them remains compliant for your industry and beyond. Having this extra assurance keeps your business risk-free from a compliance standpoint, and it places the extra responsibility on experts on this matter rather than putting the burden back on your internal IT team.
8. Improved Mobility
As hybrid and remote work continue to take the workforce by storm, businesses cannot afford to limit their collaboration and file storage to a data center in one specific location. By moving to the cloud, employees from across the globe can access the data they need to complete their day-to-day tasks. Their productivity won’t be tethered to an office, device or even a time zone. All they need is the proper access, which is managed securely by their cloud provider, to collaborate and work on files and projects that will help achieve business goals.
Not only does this drive productivity, but giving employees the power to work from anywhere improves company culture and retention. Happy team members care deeply about their work, which helps produce happy clients and customers.
9. Improved Collaboration Across Departments
Every successful business requires experts in each department, and when it’s time for them to make decisions together, they need to have access to all the necessary files, applications and workflows. Cloud migration allows for seamless collaboration and communication across departments, keeping all digital assets in one central location that can be accessed from anywhere and making it easier than ever to work together.
10. Improved Disaster Recovery Strategy
Undergoing a cloud migration is a huge aid in disaster recovery. Physical data centers can be at risk of so many factors out of your organization’s control, making it necessary to account for natural disasters, local restrictions, in-person crime, etc. Having all your business-critical digital assets in the cloud makes it far easier to regain access to your digital assets in the unfortunate case of a breach or cyberattack because it’s being stored electronically in one place. This capability empowers your business to recover quicker and get back to business without wasting time, productivity or extreme recovery costs.
Kickstart your cloud migration with the help of ivision
To realize the extensive benefits of cloud migration, it’s important that you’re executing it with someone who knows the ins and outs of the process. ivision is the proud home of cloud experts with experience in Public Cloud, Data & Analytics, Automation, Migration & Modernization and Optimization. We offer a wide variety of cloud solutions to help clients make the most of their cloud experience without breaking the bank or adding unnecessary work.
