Many clients ask us about the benefits and steps required to move their business’ network infrastructure to the cloud. Following are five steps we use to help you optimize your return-on-investment.
1. Create a 3- to 5-year business plan outlining the necessary investments and benefits of moving your computer network to a cloud service
2. Perform a Cloud Readiness Assessment. Assess what network resources you have in place now, what you will need in the future, and how these resources would be provided in a virtualized hosting, aka Cloud environment.
3. Perform a full sweep of your applications to determine where they are running now, which will run well when hosted in the cloud, and which need special strategies or technologies (such as desktop virtualization) to work well in the cloud. This will ensure a good user experience accessing all application after the move to the cloud.
4. Select a cloud provider that meets your needs for reliability and scale. The cloud environment you select should accelerate your ability to meet with legislative compliance standards and not hinder you. Overall cost will – of course – also be a factor.
5. Select a cloud provider that meets your needs for support. Just because servers, desktops, and key networking elements move to the cloud doesn’t mean they don’t need to be monitored, managed, administrated, and otherwise supported.
Ready to improve your computer network with cloud services? Give us a call and let’s launch the first five steps to get you “Zen for your business” with cloud services.