Most business critical applications are complex beasts with many dependencies. The mere thought of having to move all that to the cloud may be enough to put you off doing it, but it really shouldn’t. The benefits of moving to the cloud are many and the reasons against are quite few. If you’re wrestling with the dilemma of moving to the cloud, or not, we hope this post helps.
The SMB advantage
Most SMBs by their very nature will have smaller, more focused IT requirements. Many will be single platform such as Office 365 or a CRM. The applications are usually already in place with cloud providers. That means you only need to import your data in order to become productive.
For proprietary software or legacy platforms you have several options. You could rewrite it yourself, or have it rewritten and uploaded to the cloud. You could create a middleware app to interface with the cloud, you could find a more modern cloud version and migrate your data into it or you could leave it where it is and move everything else.
That’s a key point. Just because you’re moving some functions to the cloud doesn’t mean you have to move everything. Many hybrid cloud configurations use onsite applications alongside cloud ones. For example, you could keep your customer database and proprietary CRM onsite and move your email, office and productivity applications to the cloud. It is entirely up to you and your business needs.
The data is the same, it’s just the location that isn’t
Migrating applications to the cloud is almost exactly the same as moving it to a new in-house server. You still have to tidy up and cleanse databases, copy them, store one, use the other and run exhaustive testing before going live. The only procedural difference is that one is onsite and the other is in the cloud.
There really is little difference between keeping everything in-house and working in the cloud. Unless of course you’re counting the huge savings in cost, manpower and resources that moving to the cloud will save you!
The cloud ecosystem is now mature enough to be able to support just about any business need there is. Our expert project managers and migration experts have literally been there and done it with our clients and haven’t yet come across an application they couldn’t work with.
Moving to the cloud need not be a complex project. Work with Excalibur and we will use our industry expertise to guide you every step of the way. Contact our team today to learn more.
