5 Tips to Transition Your Business to The Cloud

If you have yet to transition your business to the cloud, now is the time! There are many benefits to be gained by going down this route. With cloud solutions, you will be able to reduce expenses and ensure your data is secure.  While cloud services offer a lot that will benefit your business, don’t lose sight of the important, and sometimes challenging, migration to the cloud. You need to make sure your business’s transition to the cloud is effective so you are to capitalize on all of these advantages. With that in mind, we are going to take a look at five steps to make your business transition to the cloud easier.

1. Use Cloud-Based Applications and Services

The first thing that you need to do is make sure your business is engaging cloud-based applications and services so that you can make the process as simple and straightforward as possible. When you are looking for the best programs to assist with your business’s operations, not only do you need to consider how easy they are to use but make sure you consider whether they will function on the cloud or if you will need to employ and manage remote servers.

2. Monitor Maintenance Times

In addition to choosing cloud-based services and applications with care, you also need to make sure that you keep on top of maintenance times. This is where a lot of business owners go wrong during the transition to the cloud. When technology is on-site, scheduling maintenance outside of the working hours is very easy. However, when it comes to cloud maintenance, it is a little more difficult to communicate with an off-site cloud provider to make sure you are ready for any downtime that is involved. After all, the last thing you want is for your business to be derailed because of unexpected downtime. 

3. Prepare for Unfamiliar Security Challenges

Although you may be well-versed in security protocol for your current system, cloud security is different. You must be prepared to face new kinds of security challenges when transitioning to the cloud or you will be caught off guard. A lot of businesses have an inclination to assume that they will not be the target of such an attack. This is a dangerous mindset. All businesses hold data that criminal hackers want to get their hands on, and because of this, all businesses need to take cyber security seriously. If you don’t, you can find yourself with a massive problem on your hands. Not only will you need to spend money getting to the bottom of the problem and patching up the security vulnerability, but you will also need to spend money repairing your reputation, too, which will take a massive hit once your clients and potential clients learn you were the victim of a cybercrime.  If that’s not bad enough, you will most likely have a fine for non-compliance as well, so a data breach is a very expensive occurrence to say the very least. This is why you need to make sure you take it seriously when transitioning to the cloud.

4. Employ Cloud Staging

Cloud staging is an adaptive strategy for desktop management that makes the most of cloud-based, centralized storage for a staging area to transform a desktop. The benefits of cloud staging are that it can help a business transition users to a completely new desktop platform or to co-exist with desktop types. This is something your IT service provider will be able to help with. 

5. Consider That Some Data Is Best Left off The Cloud

While transitioning to the cloud is something that comes highly recommended, it is vital to think about all of your data and whether it is best stored physically or in the cloud. In most cases, storing information in the cloud makes sense. However, there are some pieces of sensitive information that are safest off the cloud. Of course, this all depends on the nature of your business and the sort of documents and information that you store, but it’s dangerous to simply throw all of your data onto the cloud when transitioning. If you need help transitioning your business onto the cloud, or if you simply have questions about the process, get in touch with Axiom today. We know that it can be daunting to make big changes to your company, but we will support you every step of the way.