Preparing For The Cloud

Moving your IT infrastructure and team to the cloud requires planning and foresight. Ensuring that your IT people are ready to make the move to the cloud is key to ensuring your business can reap all the benefits of cloud computing. Here are a few tips for preparing your team, infrastructure and processes for the cloud.

Ascertain where your business is positioned

In terms of infrastructure needs, being across the requirements for cloud computing can assist you in working out what gaps need filling. Ascertaining where your company is positioned within Datalink’s 5 stage cloud maturity model can help here, where as your company moves towards making use of cloud alterations to infrastructure can include departing from silos of compute and network/storage resources. In this case, these resources become increasingly centralised, pooled and virtualised to so that improved utilisation and more rapid provisioning is achieved.

Unified Storage Architecture

The use of unified architectures is also a part of this process whereby organisations are making the move to cloud computing systems. These operations amalgamate pre-configured “blocks” of servers, networks and storage that are uniquely tuned for use in emerging, private and hybrid cloud environments. These converged structures (including VCE Vblock, EMC VSPEX, NetApp, FlexPod or IBM VersaStack) utilise automated management software to determine and maintain IT policies and allow for increased automation as well as orchestration of internal and external cloud resources.

Shifting your mindset

In terms of preparing people and processes for the move to cloud, it’s all about shifting the mindset as well as gaining clarity on the roles and responsibilities of individual players.
The IT team or company providing your IT solutions needs to be positively focused on making the move to cloud and must therefore understand the full extent to which cloud computing systems can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of all aspects of business. Teams will similarly need to be flexible in there approach as well as their thinking, as the evaluation, acquisition and monitoring of cloud paradigms will require the skills of an IT service broker, who is batting for the client and has the capacity to select the right internal or external cloud option to suit the customer’s need. New processes to consider may include ascertaining the appropriate candidates for cloud services and accounting for how and when different units are making use of cloud services within the business.

Successfully making use of cloud services is a matter of being informed about the key elements to consider when making the move, while also remembering that every organisation is unique in its needs and will require a range of different approaches.

Talk to our the cloud experts at AWD today  on 1300 855 651 about moving your team to the cloud and start doing business anywhere and everywhere.

Enquire about our IT services today.