6 Tips For Small Businesses For Moving To Cloud

Before you dive into the world of cloud, it's important to be aware of certain crucial facts. Here are 6 essential tips for all small business considering moving to cloud.

1. Move with a good reason

If you're willing to migrate your data to cloud, you probably have a good reason. Moving to cloud requires a clear purpose – on this basis you'll construct your migration plan. Otherwise you risk your organization to be incapable of adjusting to this change. 

Before making the move, ensure that you've got the tools to measure your activity and see what strategic benefits cloud brought to your operation. Another important change brought by the cloud is a diverse transformation of your business, for instance its leadership model.

2. Understand the pricing

Most small businesses consider cloud because of its potential for cutting operation costs. Before settling on cloud, make sure you know what would extending your own infrastructure cost you. Include hard costs like servers, infrastructure, vendor support or licenses.

Don't forget about these costs that usually require some measurement, such as the amount of valuable time your team would otherwise spend on dealing with problems or on manually entering data. Being aware of what's at stake will only help you to choose the best solution out there.

3. Evaluate providers

Before jumping in, take your time to evaluate the cloud provider. Look for infrastructure, which is easy to use, centrally managed and supported by a set of strong APIs to make sure it's cost-efficient and flexible.

Remember about the importance of services, such as firewalls, antivirus and intrusion detection – they attest to the quality of data storage. Choose a provider that offers secure cloud environments, which are easy to manage and will perform during peak demand.

 4. Train your staff

When moving to the cloud, make sure that your staff is prepared for this change. Maybe you should arrange a training to your staff? Some providers offer such trainings to help businesses make the most from their move.

 It's a good idea to train your staff before and after the move. The skills required for migrating data and for cloud infrastructure maintenance are radically different.

 5. Dip into cloud security

Don't get too confident with your provider and store the most sensitive data somewhere else. Otherwise, take all precautions to secure your data in the storage. Read carefully your user agreement and make sure that the server or data center are SSAE 16, SAS 70 and SOC 2 audited, and if their clients are HIPAA or PCI certified. Another thing to look for: firewalls and encryption services. They all mean that providers are responsible and serious about their service.

Cloud computing offers many interesting benefits to small businesses with limited resources. Companies should treat moving to cloud like any other radical business transition – prepare a strategy and stick to it to make sure the move is smooth and unproblematic.

Monique Craig is an Australian blogger and marketing specialist who works for Oneflare, an online marketplace which connects customers with local service providers.