This blog is part of a series about the operations pain points that many organizations face as they tackle digital transformation and change management. Our experts provide insights and recommendations based on their decades of hands-on experience and tackle some of the most pressing business and technology pain points.
With the overwhelming number of businesses on cloud infrastructures, some organizations currently on public or hybrid clouds are evaluating the possible benefits of migrating to a private cloud.
Candidates for private cloud include businesses prioritizing control, security, dedicated resources, flexibility, and compliance over their data and infrastructure. These include highly regulated industries, enterprises with sensitive data, specialized applications businesses, and organizations requiring high performance for large quantities of data.
Financial institutions, healthcare and pharmaceutical organizations, technology and manufacturing enterprises, telecommunications businesses, retailers, and government and defense agencies can all benefit from private clouds. The following are 12 considerations for private cloud migrations.
1. Define objectives – Define specific goals and measures for improved costs, scalability, performance, and security.
2. Assess workloads – Evaluate current applications and workloads and determine complexity, sensitivity, and compatibility for migration.
3. Infrastructure planning – Assess the current infrastructure to determine hardware, software, networking, and storage requirements.
4. Security measures – Implement robust cybersecurity measures to protect data with encryption, access controls, regular audits, and compliance with industry regulations and standards.
5. Compliance and regulations – Ensure compliance throughout the private cloud setup and ensure your new environment aligns with data privacy laws and other compliance requirements specific to your location and business.
6. Performance monitoring – Implement tools and processes for continuously monitoring performance and resource usage to optimize resources and identify potential bottlenecks.
7. Backup and disaster recovery – Include an end-to-end security and disaster recovery plan that includes regular data backups and strategies to recover data in the event of unexpected outages or data loss.
8. Training and skill development – Train IT staff to manage and operate the private cloud effectively and to understand the technology solutions used with the expertise to troubleshoot as needed.
9. Scalability and flexibility – Ensure the private cloud solution allows for the desired scalability and flexibility so your organization can scale resources up or down on demand.
10. Cost management – Monitor and manage costs associated with the private cloud by understanding pricing models, optimizing resource usage, and regularly reviewing expenses.
11. Testing and piloting – Before full-scale migration, conduct pilot tests to ensure compatibility, functionality, and performance to identify and address issues before final migration.
12. Vendor selection – Choose a reliable and reputable vendor or build an in-house solution that aligns with your specific needs, considering factors including support, reliability, and track record.
Three top benefits of private cloud in digital transformations
If your organization is considering migration to a private cloud but is unsure of the benefits, talk to other businesses within your industry to learn from their experience and consider these three advantages of implementing a private cloud infrastructure.
- Enhanced security and control – Data protection with a dedicated environment for greater control over access and security measures and segregation from public environments to reduce the risk of unauthorized access and breaches.
- Increased performance and reliability – Predictable performance from dedicated resources, redundant systems, and failover mechanisms provide greater reliability and uptime and allow for optimized workload management.
- Flexibility and customization – Tailored infrastructure to customize needs for specific workloads, integration with legacy systems, and implementation of specialized security measures as well as scalability and adaptability of solutions and resources.
Want to learn more?
The “Operations Pain Points Solved” series highlights common issues faced by organizations everywhere. Read the other blogs in this series to learn about transforming company culture, managing complexity, transformation and AI, establishing a target operating model, optimizing the customer experience, transformation planning, managing people.
