Azure and the Myths of Migration

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One of the first blogs ever on the Conectrix website focused on the benefits of moving to the Cloud. This service is the future of business and should be seriously considered by all. Alas, concerns remain and people are still hesitant. To dispel the myths of Cloud migration Conectrix will be teaming up with Managed Solution, focusing in on their Azure Cloud offering and why you shouldn’t fear migration.

Holding onto On-Premise

People with on-premise servers think of this tech as their baby. Companies have invested so much into their on-premise infrastructure that they have no idea how their workloads or applications could move over. While it is true that some applications work well on-premise, it is also true that much more work too on the cloud.

Azure Migrate is a tool Managed Solution offers to get your company into the cloud. This tool measures your company’s ability to migrate and whether or not a hybrid solution is recommended. Azure Migrate allows you to determine Azure readiness, size recommendations, estimate monthly cost, and migrate with high confidence. Some companies prefer a phased approach to the cloud, and therefor the hybrid cloud option is an attractive one for many companies. Azure Migrate allows you to see which workloads or applications you can migrate over first. There are certainly good reasons to keep some resources on-premise, but there is no good reason to keep everything on-premise.

A Buff to Your Security

Security is also a concern when moving to the cloud. Your on-premise server is locked up and gated so you have a tangible idea of its security. This belief makes sense on paper, but recent data breaches and natural disasters have overturned this line of logic. Just because your data is in an invisible environment does not mean it’s not safe; in fact, the opposite is true.  

In a previous blog we covered many of the security features already built into the cloud but we’ll go over some more with Azure in mind. Azure has seamless scalability, meaning no physical infrastructure is needed or put another way, no physical infrastructure to get damaged or destroyed. Azure, and Cloud in general, have disaster recovery capabilities that an on-premise environment can’t even compete with. Hackers can get into on-premise based systems from anywhere, but not so with Cloud-based systems. While some municipalities have to keep some information on-premise, they can certainly move other data to the Cloud. There are really so many security methods already in place for the Cloud that to downplay its strength is rather criminal.

The Price Tag of Migration

Cost is another concern when moving to the Cloud. If I already have my servers on-premise, why should I spend the money to move over to the Cloud? Consider this common scenario: A hardware refresh is every 5 to 10 years and can cost millions of dollars to upgrade your hardware. Similar to when you sell a used car, its price is significantly marked down compared to when you bought it. The same goes with your hardware, it will depreciate. This is not the same when you migrate to Azure or any Cloud-based system for that manner.

Migrating to Azure is a pay as you go and pay for what you need system. This is great for budgeting because your company is not wasting time and energy on unused recourses. The fact that it pairs well with pre-existing Microsoft solutions and offers many versions of hybrid models minimizes many of the costs concerns one might have when moving to the Cloud. The cloud’s cost-effective scalability helps offset the cost when you do the transition, meaning you’ll be paying less and less for your old, depreciating hardware.

Concluding Thoughts

It is always frightening when you start something new, migrating to the Cloud included. But think of moving to a bigger home. Sure it is frightening at first, but after a while, you begin to appreciate the more storage, the many bedrooms, and the pool in the backyard. The same goes when you migrate to Azure. Trepidation is normal, but get informed and make the move.

Zachary Lawless