Netflix made their move to cloud after disaster struck. It was August 2008 and the company was unable to ship DVDs to its members for three days due to a major data centre failure. This experience led the US entertainment company to rethink their options.
Speaking at a conference in 2012, a cloud security architect at Netflix explained that as the company moved towards becoming a successful global streaming service, availability and agility became much more critical and they needed to be able to up capacity as demand grew. To put this demand in context, PC Magazine reported that Netflix eats up roughly 32% of US bandwidth during peak times. He went on to describe Netflix’s requirements at a textbook use case for cloud.
With this Netflix example in mind, do you also want to enjoy the reliability, flexibility and technical agility of cloud without having to buy or build anything yourself?
Here’s are a few top tips and lessons to help you ensure your cloud migration runs smoothly:
Failing to plan is planning to fail
Migrating workloads to the cloud shouldn’t be done in a rush – take time to ask what you are looking to achieve and why how you’re using cloud to do so. This is an essential starting point. Simply going with the latest cloud migration trend, without assessing if it meets your needs, isn’t likely to bear any fruit. Taking time to plan your cloud migration also affords you time to iterate, break and fix things and refine and improve your strategy until you’re happy with your approach.
Calculating costs
Budgetary constraints can have a negative effect on the improvements you’re trying to make. And as IT teams are constantly being asked to do more with less, proving the value of your cloud investment is crucial. Business leaders and stakeholders must be given tangible evidence of the value of cloud and how it can boost broader efficiencies and productivity. And it is these operational efficiencies that bring about countless cost savings.
Avoid lifting and shifting, rather shop and drop
Simply approaching your cloud migration by moving truckloads of “stuff” from a data centre on to the cloud yields minimal rewards. In doing so, you’re simply moving legacy processes, and your business’ existing IT issues, to a new location. A “shop and drop” strategy means dropping certain legacy applications and shopping to replace them with solutions that are designed and developed for the loud. Want to leapfrog different generations of apps and deployments and leverage the most state-of-the-art solutions? This is the way to go.
Where this isn’t possible, ensure old and new speak the same language
In situations where you have both cloud and legacy capabilities, you need to brainstorm how to infuse legacy systems with cutting-edge cloud technology. The trick is to use the cloud to make legacy operations more effective. IT automation is a great example of how cloud-based innovations can streamline legacy apps and business processes.
Ask the experts
If you want to maximise wins, it might just be a good idea to those with a strong track record and who’ve had success in the past. Any cloud partner that has been in the business for a while, will understand all the pitfalls and shortcuts to help you prepare for obstacles before you even know they exist. Experience is the greatest form of knowledge with it comes to cloud migrations.
Keen to find out more about the successfully embracing the possibilities and opportunities of cloud? We’ve got your back.
