Is cloud migration right for you?

Companies are jumping on the cloud bandwagon at a rapid pace. In fact, Gartner predicts that the public cloud services market will grow 16.5 percent to $204 billion in 2016.

If you attend any IT conferences, you’ve heard the buzz. "What have you moved to the cloud?" "What are you planning to move?" On top of that, the goal of moving some part of your infrastructure to the cloud may have burrowed its way into your annual performance objectives. The pressure is on. It’s time to make the move. Or is it?

Just because other companies are barreling forward towards the cloud, it does not mean cloud migration is the right decision for everyone. Even putting security risks aside, often at the forefront, the economics do not make sense for everyone.

To find out if clouds are in your forecast, you need to do your due diligence, taking these steps.

1. Select a Test Environment

You cannot afford to jeopardize operations and revenues when testing cloud performance. Consequently, you need to find a nonproduction environment, such as development to test, so it will not negatively impact your business today.

Use historical data from your infrastructure performance monitoring software to determine the complexity and size of that environment. Because it will minimize the cost, you’re better off starting with something small and simple.

2. Review the Environment’s Requirements

Once you’ve selected an environment, you need to look at the utilization, capacity and performance over the last 30 days. Use that to create your baseline profile which determines your requirements.

3. Shop Around

Now, go to two or three cloud providers and ask for quotes. You can give each vendor an accurate summary of your needs.

4. Compare the Quotes

When you receive the quotes, it’s probable that you will notice a lot of variation. One company may tell you it’s going to cost $1,000 a month; another may say $1,500, and the third might estimate $750.

What’s going on? To find out, you need to read the fine print. One company may be giving you a defined environment but assuming that you are only going to use it 5 percent of the time. Once you go above that, they will charge you for the additional usage.

Because cloud providers are giving you virtual resources, you have to dig to understand the restrictions. You need to be wary of falling for a bait-and-switch scheme, for instance, where you get the storage that you requested but the response time is too slow, hampering performance.

5. Do a Trial

Once you’ve gone through the quotes with a fine-tooth comb and asked all the necessary questions, decide which cloud providers you’d like to try. Ask each of them for a 30-day trial. Then, duplicate your test environment so you can run with each supplier. You can do your tests in parallel or sequentially.

While you can ask users for their feedback on their experience during the test, it may be hard for them to quantify performance. You’re better off using performance monitoring software that can tell you in black and white how each cloud provider performed.

Sometimes performance does not meet expectations. If this is the case, the cloud provider may let you know they have a premium option at an additional cost that will guarantee the performance you’re requesting. It’s good to know this before you’ve formally made the move to the cloud. If another cloud provider has given you the performance you need, you can now make an apples-to-apples price comparison.

6. Make the Move

If you were able to find two good vendors during your trial period, that’s a bonus for the next step. That’s because it’s wise to split your workload between two vendors. Why? Because there is a tendency for service to erode over time.

You need to keep monitoring performance to ensure that it’s as strong six months from now as it is the day you made the decision to move your infrastructure. Everything in the cloud is fluid, and as your vendor adds more customers, they consume resources and may negatively affect operations.

Also, going beyond the numbers, you may find that one vendor offers better service.

So, crawl before you walk, and walk before you run. Examine the data, understand your needs, ask the right questions and take a step-by-step approach. By doing so, you can minimize your risks and maximize your returns on cloud migration.

Image Credit: Brian A Jackson / Shutterstock

As Co-Founder and Principal of ATS Group and the Galileo Division, Chris Churchey brings over 35 years of IT experience in enterprise open systems and storage technologies -- with an emphasis on operating systems, virtualization, large scale systems/storage architecting, design and integration, and performance optimization of computer resources. Chris holds numerous IBM Certifications and is a subject matter expert (SME) in Server/Storage Consolidation, Performance, AIX, Linux, Power, Virtualization, and IBM Storage technologies. In his current role, Chris oversees business development and the management and support of large/direct ATS customers.