I am looking for any lessons learned for any projects migrating to a cloud datacenter project Saving Changes...
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Eric SimmsSenior Program ManagerBaltimore, Maryland, United States
Before you migrate, make sure you consider how to retrieve your data from the cloud. For example, you might want to do so if your cloud provider's costs rise too high, or you begin to doubt your provider's ability to safeguard your data. Saving Changes...
As Eric said, take care of the security of your data once you move to cloud. Also look at the training aspect for your stakeholders/employees. Make sure the cloud vendor has great and timely support. Look at all your business functions and ask yourself "Why are we moving to the cloud" and perform a cost/benefit analysis for each. Some aspects you may discover you will keep in-house, related to for example IP. Consider piloting the cloud platform or transition in stages to assess its effectiveness. Just some of the things to consider. Saving Changes...
Are we talking a private cloud, semi-private or public? Depending on which of the above you are looking at, there might need to be a lot of effort spent in governance and risk management to ensure that stakeholders are comfortable with the shift in their data to a vendor's location.
What type of flexibility is being provided for administration by your staff - is it completely hands-off in which case upgrades or patches would need to be coordinated through the service provider and an SLA would need to be in place for that.
Kiron Saving Changes...
Deepesh RammoorthyICT Project Manager ( PMP®AgilePM®Certified ScrumMaster® (CSM®))| Australian Red Cross Blood ServiceTarneit, Vic, Australia
I know my colleagues haven't offered actual lessons learnt and even I am giving suggestions on what you are "likely to learn".
Option 1; If the infrastructure is in-house, organizations have to pay technical Human capital like Server and storage engineers for maintenance. They also have to backup their data hence tape drives and backup media. They also have to pay organizations to send tape backups offsite. They have to pay data centers for Power and Money. Their IT team tends to be a lot larger and traditionally is the most expensive Business function to run.
Add change management overheads on top of that to change your infrastructure. If the infrastructure is in-house, especially in a Matrix organizations, Department managers can flex their muscles and delay IT teams from performing a seemingly simple change or justify reams of paper work because they can !
Option 2 :- Compare that against a single monthly fee for infrastructure and data maintenance to an external vendor with a skeleton technical workforce .
If infrastructure needs to be down for maintenance or upgrades, the organization is forced to accept the downtime. There may be less flexibility in this regards.
Find out how cost effective option 2 is as compared to option 1.
Find out how efficient service provision is in Option 2 as compared to Option 1.
On the flip side look at how secure your data is on the cloud versus in-house. Can the vendor guarantee security as per best practice standards. Are the nature of your business and privacy standards such that some details are extremely confidential? Saving Changes...
