Jared Jacobs| Business2community
Are you thinking about making the move to the cloud, but aren’t sure where to begin? Following these steps can help make your transition easier:
Investigate
First, you should take the time to understand what your cloud options are. How will cloud computing change the way your employees work? What are the potential benefits and drawbacks? Will you need to upgrade your machines to fully take advantage of what the cloud has to offer? What are the pricing options? Which cloud architecture (public, private, or hybrid) should you choose?
Once you’ve identified the areas where the cloud will have the biggest impact for your organization, lay out a road map for cloud adoption. Set goals and deadlines and define some evaluation metrics—how will you know when you’ve succeeded? How will you measure ROI? Make sure that you know exactly what your plan is before moving forward.
Experiment
Instead of jumping into the cloud with your whole organization, start small. Make the transition a little at a time. You may choose to begin the move with your customer relationship management system, for example. Once you’ve made the switch, wait for a while to see what the changes are. Does it improve your business processes? Is your business more agile and responsive to customers?
Learn from your successes and your mistakes, and implement those lessons in the next phase of your cloud rollout.
Adopt
The final stage is simply expanding your cloud capabilities to meet your business needs. Keep the “slow and steady” mindset by making the transition in one area (storage, communications, office applications, etc.) at a time, and as your business keeps benefiting from the cloud, don’t be afraid to keep moving forward with adoption.
