This is the penultimate article in our short, sharp series on cloud computing. It’s David Akka’s 4-step plan for moving applications to the cloud. His first step is to take stock:

“The key is to check how much it costs to maintain the assets on-site and to explore how much saving can be achieved with a cloud alternative.”

Step 2 is to realise what is possible, and Step 3 to formulate an “evolutionary process”, rather than a “big bang”:

“differentiating between hardware consolidation and software as these are two completely different worlds.”

Step 4 is to decide which migration model is best for your organisation. Akka gives the following example:

“A very attractive option for some companies is to cloud enable part of the application, say you are a big manufacturer and you want to outsource your purchase orders or your admin(for BPO) you can take that portion of your application to the cloud in days.”

Akka finishes with these words of wisdom:

“To my mind its all about research and planning, don’t rush into anything, plan every step of your move you know what they say about proper preparation…”