A Quest to Cloud Maturity

Cloud adoption is an action that every company keeps in their priority list. Why? Well, technology is advancing at the speed of light. All the application architectures from the last decade are ageing fast, and they are being replaced by the more modern, cloud-based ones. Cloud adoption is inevitable. And yet, quite a lot of companies and organizations still have trouble finding a fast and effective migration strategy.

However, there is a path one can take to make life slightly less difficult. Even if this is the case, you must realise, that this will still be a bumpy road, as it requires a lot of experimentation and patience. Adopting the cloud is experience-based learning, and each company will need to go through quite a bit of a journey. But do not worry; very much like a quest, it all depends on which path you decide to choose. We offer you some tips towards a better path. It will help you open up more doors and possibilities to adopt the cloud in a way that will meet your needs and expectations. Let us embark on a six stage cloud maturity journey that every company will, and in today’s world, has to go through.

1. Experiment

Slow and steady first steps. Try to figure out what the cloud actually is and what it does. Test out the waters by using the cloud for a single application only. This is only to understand how it works. Usually a storage solution such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is used, as it is easier to store some information into the cloud than use complex applications and the cloud’s processes.

2. Secure

Step two is a stage an organisation mustn’t skip. This is when all of the organisations laws, policies, and legal matters are formed within the cloud culture. Basically this is how the cloud will be used within the company. During this step you also have to make sure that there are no loose ends, meaning that all of the applications have to follow monitoring regulations and strategies whilst moving into the cloud. When one moves to the cloud, things will shift and change. A top priority for an organisation is to realise, whether their applications will work when things move, and who will have the permission to see them once they are in the cloud.

3. Move the whole database

The third step will still include simple lift-and-shift operations, but begin by replacing on premise servers and other back-end resources. At this stage the organisations need to learn how the cloud works from an entire application standpoint. Moreover, it is necessary to make sure that all of the monitoring and visibility strategies that were worked out in the 2nd step will be put into action, as the migration into the cloud has reached its mid-point. This is also the stage where an organisation starts to benefit from the cloud with lowered costs and flexibility.

4. Enable the advantages

At this point, all of the benefits shift into high gear. It is important to note, that the cloud is a place to not only store your applications and servers. It comes with more advantages, and those are value-added services. Such as Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) and Amazon Aurora. Both of these services make it easy to set up, operate and scale a relational database in the cloud. They save your money and your time by automating administrational tasks as well. You may also look into services like Amazon Elastic Beanstalk and Amazon Elasticsearch Service. They allow deploying and scaling web applications and services. This will provide even higher value to the said services and their applications.

5. Use cloud-unique services

Nearly there! When a company becomes a cloud-enabled organisation, it can start using leverage high-value, cloud-specific services. This is available only for those who are in the cloud-based environment. They include serverless computing (such as AWS Lambda), highly scalable schemaless databases (such as Amazon DynamoDB), data warehousing (Amazon Redshift), and other generalized services, such as queuing (Amazon Simple Queue Service, or SQS) and notification (Amazon Simple Notification Service, or SNS) services.

6. Move everything to the cloud

This is it. The last step! This is where your organisation can rake in all of the benefits, added-values and cloud-unique services. The only thing left is – fully commit to the cloud. Move all of the company’s data bases to the service. It is understandable that more established companies find their reasons to use their own data bases, but the end goal is to make the final moving-in.

As mentioned before, moving into the cloud is inevitable. The chances that there will be “no cloud” policy based companies within the next few years are slim. But do not feel discouraged by this. It might be a difficult and bumpy journey, but you are not alone taking this path. Take your time, make the right choices and don’t be afraid to experiment and don’t forget to adapt to your company’s needs and policies.