A Checklist to
Cloud Readiness Assessment

Across the globe, studies show a consistent increase in using cloud solutions and cloud-based services to leverage its advantages such as on-demand service, greater network access, resource pooling, flexibility, and scalability. 80% of enterprises have experienced operational excellence in a few months only after adopting the cloud.

As businesses look to transform their operations to the cloud, IT and business leaders are weighing up how and when to migrate their current workloads to the right cloud. However, it is not an easy task. They must understand critical applications, hardware, and system network that support their operational delivery.

Indeed, pre-migration groundwork is as important as implementing cloud migration best practices. Cloud readiness assessment supports you to on cloud adoption and transformation strategies. These strategies help you maximize cloud benefits for your business.

What is Cloud Readiness Assessment?

A cloud readiness assessment is a process to determine an organization's readiness to move to cloud; how prepared its existing workloads and assets, applications are to migrate onto the new cloud ecosystem without a hitch. It is a best practice for any organization, migrating IT infra, or an app to the cloud, to perform cloud assessment for smooth cloud migration while establishing an environment that caters organization’s needs.

A cloud readiness assessment involves a checklist which is an itemized list specifying whether apps and data can be moved to the cloud at ease, or with minimal disruption to business operations during the transition. For example, using the information assembled by cloud assessment, visual representations of the organization's needs can be made alongside detailing what steps need to take for cloud migration. A Cloud Readiness Assessment duly incorporates current IT landscape assessments and Cloud Risk Assesments for maximum impact.

6 Reasons Why Firms Must Undergo Cloud Assessment

• Identify cost-cutting opportunities: Lessen the cost of cloud deployment and determine cost savings with system improvements.
• Get insights into costs of existing IT infrastructure: Quickly assess business expenditure while knowing the cost of your existing IT infrastructure.
• Modernize your IT: Understand how to integrate cloud services into your IT portfolio.
• Share data with confidence: Establish IT as a strategic business partner by communicating real costs with business leaders.
• Increase marketer productivity: Deploy readymade layouts to make new designs or reuse existing content, and templates across sites, resulting in an increase in productivity.
• Simplified omnichannel-based content delivery: From a single interface, orchestrate unique experience to contact users across all channels and devices.

Cloud Readiness Assessment Checklist: The Seven Considerations

• Current workloads and needs must be measured for understanding the necessities of the environment and operations in future
• Validate that any app is designed to run in the new environment, and how it can be modified to ensure a smooth migration.
• If a new cloud-native app is used in combination with an existing program, test it to ensure that they work well together and how they can be adapted if problems arise.
• Test all new processes and software for security and compliance with any applicable regulatory requirements or best practices.
• Checks the efficacy of an old environment to release data as well as the new environment to accept any old data without loss or corruption.
• Effective timeframes to determine which app or process will move first with minimal impact on business operations. Many businesses choose to migrate to cloud environments all at once, however individual processes are moved to reduce disruption.
• Any changes must have the support of key decision-makers and influencers before they are rolled out. Also, employees training program must be carried out to ensure that employees are aware of the advantages of new processes and additional features.

Cloud Readiness Assessment Framework: The 5-Step Process

1. Identify the Business Objective and Opportunity for Migration

   An organization should understand why it wants to migrate to the cloud and to what extent. Next, an organization must decide what to migrate to the cloud. Sometimes, moving all applications and data to the cloud may not make sense.

   Security and privacy regulations, for example, may require the organization to know where data is stored and who has access to it. Some business consideration for migrating to the cloud includes cost-cutting for replacing hardware and maintenance of data centres, scaling resource for application improvements, and better data resiliency with DS-ready solutions.

2. Evaluate Internal Resources

   Following that, an organization must assess its internal resources. For example, available funds, necessary skill sets, and availability window for an IT team to focus on cloud migration. Inexperienced IT staff must learn how to migrate to the cloud, and how their peers have performed while ensuring that best practices are applied to the cloud migration. It is critical for leaders to identify the knowledge gaps in their IT team and educate them.

   The IT staff must be familiar with the organization's IT environment. Peers should have deep understanding of tools, methods, and services to enable an organization to migrate to the cloud. However, bringing in a cloud migration expert to fill resource and knowledge gaps may be necessary.

3. Scrutinize Existing IT Infrastructure Requirements

   An organization must evaluate its IT environment and infrastructure to determine which applications, data, and other workloads need to move to the cloud, keep in the organization's data centre, or be removed entirely. This provides an organization to decide what it requires for a cloud-first environment.

   When performing a cloud assessment, it is also important to plan how applications will be transited. Most applications can be needed to change for the new architecture. Approaches applied can range from small changes to an application's core to rearchitecting an app, or to opting SaaS.

4. Identify Security Requirements

   Global and industry-related regulations can impact an organization's cloud security posture and what is moved to the cloud. An organization should inventory its data to gain a complete picture of what is where. Also, it must understand the level of security applied to various types of data.

   Encryption, identity and access management (IAM), and web application firewalls are a few approaches to data security organizations can consider when performing a cloud assessment.

5. Determine Timeline and Budget

   A set timeline is critical for an organization to meet certain milestones. This is required to keep track of progress and the reasons for setbacks. Budgets must be developed in tandem with business opportunities and migration including TCO calculation, migration training and expenses, licencing costs, etc.

   Furthermore, timelines and budgets must consider application migration. Usually, it takes less time to move applications to the cloud while making some periphery changes. If an organization rebuilds one or more applications, it will take longer but results in more cloud profitability.

Deploy the Right Tools and Cloud Adoption Framework with Cloud4C Managed Service

Many organizations are under pressure to modernize their stack, migrate to the cloud, or be responsive to mission needs. However, they lack the elementary understanding and knowledge to take considerable action.

Then how can they make measurable augmentation in a sustainable direction? How do they optimize cloud infra for maximum profitability?

Cloud4C's dedicated Cloud Adoption Framework backed by extensive Cloud Readiness Assessments helps analyze your requirements and recommend the right cloud service provider suited to your needs. Having fail-proof plans in place, we empower enterprises to move to the cloud with minimum impact on operational continuity. With our tailored set of Cloud Consulting Services, you can ensure a smooth cloud migration that meets your current and future requirements. For more information, visit here.