More and more businesses are adopting a cloud-first approach to their IT infrastructure. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 95% of new digital workloads will be delivered on cloud-native platforms — up from just 30% in 2021.

The term cloud migration describes the process of transferring an organisation’s digital assets from an on-premise infrastructure to a cloud-based one. It involves moving all data, applications, hardware and IT resources to a third-party cloud service provider like Microsoft Azure.

Cloud migration can help you explore new revenue streams, shore up your data security, save huge sums on IT maintenance, and scale up your resources.

This article will outline more of the great benefits of the cloud migration process and how Atech can help you execute your digital transformation plans flawlessly to transform your business.

Benefits of cloud migration

Maintaining on-premise IT can be time and resource-draining. For example, the initial cost of installing one physical server in your offices can be anywhere from £800-£2500.

It’s likely that your organisation will need multiple servers to operate, and a large amount of office space to house these machines and physical security measures to protect them. The costs of recruiting IT personnel to ensure your equipment is running smoothly are also considerable. In addition, upgrading and scaling your IT architecture can be prohibitively expensive – often running into the tens of thousands.

In contrast, cloud migration enables organisations to embrace a more cost-effective IT expansion model. Let’s take a look at some more of the benefits of the cloud migration process, including:

Optimising IT costs

For small businesses, cloud service subscriptions can range from £50-£200 per month, depending on your company’s IT requirements. It’s also straightforward to scale up your solutions when needed, as you only pay for the resources you need. Maintenance costs are also included in your cloud subscription fee, along with 24/7 support. Plus, you won’t need to invest in physical office space to house additional IT equipment.

Altogether, these cost-savings empower organisations to channel their IT budget towards advancing their business goals, and leave behind the inefficiencies of maintaining outdated legacy systems.

Provides scalability and flexibility

In the fast-paced world of modern business, ensuring you have the IT resources to scale your brand and embrace new opportunities is vital. Let’s say you experience a sudden surge in website traffic due to a successful marketing campaign. Switching to cloud services enables you to expand your bandwidth allocation and server capacity seamlessly, ensuring your customers experience no disruptions in your website services.

Moreover, cloud platforms like Azure have a global presence, improving organisational performance by running workloads in close proximity to users and customers.

Enhanced security

Microsoft cloud migration offers several distinct security advantages over on-premise IT. Firstly, it deploys advanced encryption, intrusion detection measures and regular audits to ensure data protection. Secondly, the subscription fees also provide experienced security personnel, ensuring that your systems are safeguarded at all times.

Cloud migration also minimises the risk of data loss as providers can enable quick restoration of your data in the event of an emergency. In addition, it provides a centralised platform for security management, ensuring that you can enforce consistent security protocols across all your company devices.

Streamlines compliance

Industry compliance regulations constantly shift as businesses evolve their IT environments to accommodate advancements like remote/hybrid working models. For companies that rely on legacy hardware/software, data governance policies can become trickier to manage in the face of this changing workplace landscape.

However, cloud migration processes can be tailored to meet your company’s compliance requirements. For instance, Azure cloud migration tools include automated resource management capabilities, simplifying tasks such as device onboarding. These features help organisations meet their compliance needs seamlessly.

Straightforward cloud management and monitoring

Finally, Cloud migration makes it easy for IT teams to allocate and monitor the performance/usage of IT resources. With Microsoft cloud migration, these essential productivity checks are automated, saving organisations time and effort in ensuring operations are running smoothly.

Furthermore, these sophisticated management tools proactively suggest where organisations can improve, helping them optimise their processes over time.

Types of cloud migration

There are three main cloud migration strategies you can deploy to transform your organisation’s IT environment. These include:

Re-host (Lift and Shift)

This method moves applications from on-premises hosts to Platform-as-as-Service or Infrastructure-as-a-Service providers.

Re-platform

Re-platforming cloud migration is the process of moving an existing application or system to the cloud while making compatible adjustments to utilise cloud-native features and capabilities like auto-scaling, managed storage and data processing.

Re-factoring

This cloud migration process involves refactoring applications and software components using .Net, and Java etc. to conform to cloud-first enterprise standards.

Process of cloud migration

Here at Atech, we have recently obtained Microsoft’s Advanced Specialisation accreditation in Windows Server and SQL Server migration of Microsoft Azure. This certificate proves that we have deep knowledge and skills in performing seamless cloud migration strategies for a wide range of industries.

Our method for executing cloud transformation includes the following steps:

Step 1. Defining your Azure cloud migration strategy and building a business case

Firstly, we examine your company objectives and best-case scenarios in our Azure cloud migration readiness report. This document maps out your architecture and plans the lowest risk path to a successful migration, incurring minimum operational downtime. Read more about some tips for a successful Azure migration here.

Step 2. Discovery and assessment

With the best migration method meticulously planned, we move on to application discovery and assessment. This stage involves scanning all applications and determining their usage and dependency on other systems.

Step 3. Microsoft cloud migration

Next comes the migration itself, through automated Azure cloud migration management tools. This step modernises existing tools, develops new cloud-first applications and establishes a cloud collaboration framework to ensure your teams get the most out of the new environment. For more on this, read our definitive guide to cloud collaboration .

Atech’s industry-leading cloud migration services will ensure your smoothest cloud migration path

We’re experienced and highly credentialed cloud migration specialists with a bank of customer testimonials highlighting our success in this crucial managed IT service area.

So, if you want to evolve your IT capabilities to accommodate all of the benefits of cloud computing, get in touch with our team today.