How Azure Cloud Migration Helps Organizations Enhance Process Resilience

Gone are the practices when enterprises used to maintain a room housed with computers, local servers, and other massive hardware configurations to manage their burdensome enterprise applications. Organizations are actively adopting cloud technology to build, deploy, and maintain their enterprise applications at a reduced cost.

Though there are several cloud platforms, Microsoft Azure emerges as one of the leading cloud computing platforms that deliver numerous benefits of the cloud to companies. However, migrating to the Azure platform comes with its own set of challenges and risks, which can be eliminated through comprehensive planning and strategizing.

Introduction to Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure, previously recognized as Windows Azure, is a public cloud-based computing platform. It offers a wide range of cloud services, such as analytics, computation, networking, and storage. Business users can pick and select from these services to build and scale first-hand applications, or host existing applications in the public cloud.

Microsoft Azure platform is designed to help organizations manage IT complexities and fulfill their organizational objectives. It is highly compatible with open source technologies and delivers tools that support various sectors including finance, eCommerce, retail, and insurance. This offers users the flexibility to use their preferred technologies and tools. Moreover, Azure offers four different arrangements of cloud computing including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Serverless, and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

Benefits of Migrating to Azure Platform

Scalability and Flexibility

With Microsoft Azure cloud migration, enterprises can easily move the computing resources based on business requirements and workload capabilities. It is also possible for organizations to instantly scale up and scale down their data storage abilities. This level of flexibility and scalability options makes Azure an appropriate and personalized platform for organizations of any sector and size. Besides, Azure supports almost any programming language, tool, OS, or framework that the enterprises use in real-time which makes it a highly compatible solution. Another major benefit of leveraging Microsoft Azure services is the pay-per-use arrangement where the user has to spend only for the cloud resources they utilize and not for the whole IT assets.

Advanced Business Insights and Data Analytics

The Microsoft Azure platform comes with integrated analytical solutions to organize and visualize data for strategic decision-making. With concurrent dashboards that cover user response times, data flow and processing, and the capability to analyze big data, organizations can enhance business workflows more accurately and frequently.

Advanced analytics can support organizations with segmenting end-users based on behavior and provide a personalized experience, further enhancing their satisfaction. Azure Cloud platform’s services include Machine Learning utilities with compliant models to try new methods and analyze predictions before launching them in the market. For running data analytics, organizations can use “Stream Analytics” to set up an end-to-end, fully-functional analytics pipeline within a few minutes. By employing the Cortana Intelligence Suite, businesses can discover ways to modernize their operations and change data into intelligent actions.

Robust Disaster Recovery Options

Another essential advantage of Microsoft Azure cloud migration is the availability of disaster recovery strategies. The platform’s Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) functionality ensures the obtainability of the data during an outage scenario through automated workload replication and recovery practices. The availability of disaster recovery and multi-factor authentication abilities can restore business data in a matter of minutes and ensure service delivery stability even during any disaster. Besides, businesses can protect their data with better compliance and ensure secure authentication without any interruptions. Azure’s enterprise-grade data backup systems can store and manage a vast amount of information and generate multiple copies of the information for any future usage in case of any data failure or loss.

Better Availability and Reliability

By migrating to the Azure platform, businesses can access their data on the cloud from any location at any time. Azure availability zones offer separate physical locations to secure data and applications from failures. Azure directs incoming traffic to several locations to maintain greater availability and responsiveness. Since most of the organizations and end-users utilize the Microsoft stack, Azure finds it highly easy to align with workplaces strategies and technology roadmaps. By partnering with the best Azure consulting company, businesses can obtain 24×7 tech support and ensure uptime, performance targets, and connectivity agreements.

3 Key Azure Migration Challenges and Solutions

Integrating with On-Premise Systems

During and after migrating to Microsoft Azure, many leading businesses will have infrastructure and 3rd party applications that need to be integrated with new cloud-based systems. Implementing these integrations and assuring that the systems work seamlessly in total, can be a major challenge for organizations during a migration project.

External integrations can be done easily within Microsoft Azure, but internal systems that are isolated before the migration process can introduce new requirements that need to be organized and implemented carefully. By performing staged migration, experts can help reduce downtime through Microsoft’s Azure integration services that make the internal integrations testing process easier. Based on the complexity of a migration process, the experts execute a proof of concept migration that transfers a few integrated applications as a sample case to identify organizational pain points and rectify them at the earliest.

Protecting Sensitive Business Data in the Cloud

Another major challenge that organizations highly encounter while migrating to the Azure platform is the data security threats that arise. Data stored in local silos are highly vulnerable to new security problems. This has been a common challenge for Azure cloud platforms since the inception of the technology. Security concerns must be addressed during and before the migration plan as they can significantly impact costs, operationally and financially.

Therefore, the Microsoft community has developed an Azure Information Protection framework that allows business users to regulate access to data and files using the right management structure. Business documents or information that needs to be classified to certain employees can be monitored and organized by providing labels and privacy rules. The Azure platform also provides an Integrated Tracking Portal that offers the ability for security administrators to monitor and control data accessibility in real-time.

Restructuring Technology Teams to Embrace the Cloud

Migrating applications and infrastructure to Azure introduces new challenges in terms of team organization and staffing. Businesses that envision creating future applications and data processing systems in the cloud infrastructure need to consider this staffing aspect in their long-term plans. Azure migration projects may need to be scheduled by hiring systems engineers and developers, who’re experienced in working with the cloud platform. It might also be effective to consider alternatives like in-house training programs to equip current employees with the new skill sets that are required.

Wrapping Up

In general, cloud migrations can be challenging to perform for enterprises with complex tech systems and necessities. However, cloud platforms like Azure offer minimal chances of security and integration problems and eliminate the need for executing remigration. By associating with the best service provider, businesses can plan for requirements like resources/staffing, perform staged migration, and reap the benefits.