Strategy
The reasons why your company wants to move to the Cloud can vary. Maybe your data center is approaching its end-of-life and instead of investing in upgrading or replacing legacy appliances and infrastructure, you would like to decommission the data centers and migrate workloads to the Cloud.
It might be that you need to control your costs and moving to the Cloud will help you transition from purchasing physical infrastructure to starting up virtual resources as you need them, i.e. moving from CAPEX (Capital Expenditure) to OPEX (Operational Expenditure). Or the move to the Cloud can position you to keep up with technical innovation, process innovation and competitors. It is called digital transformation.
In any case, it is important to identify the reasons why your company wants to move to the Cloud as it will help everyone get on the same page internally and share the same objective.
Assessing your IT environment
Before considering the move, you need to assess your existing IT environment, including applications, resources and current costs. A Cloud solution might not be an ideal solution for all businesses and scenarios. Some legacy apps which cannot be updated or adapted may not be the best candidate. Do you need a lot of customization for your application? Which infrastructure is used and what is the expected SLA? How much does it cost? What are the current hidden costs like cooling and power of the datacenter, management of the infrastructure, licensing, support, etc. If you do not have the in-house knowledge to do it, it might also be best to select a Cloud partner that will help you transition to the Cloud.
Which Cloud to choose?
Once you have decided to move and you are surrounded by the team that can support you, you must identify the type of Cloud that is best suited to your needs: public, private, hybrid or community Cloud and define the architecture components needed based on the IT assessment you have done before. The next step includes the selection of a Cloud provider that meets your architecture and strategy requirements. You should also take into considerations other aspects like SLA, security, customer service, vendor lock-in, as well as regulatory and geographic variables to make the right decision.