If you’re a Microsoft shop, Microsoft’s cloud is a no-brainer. If your people use Windows and Office, you’re already tied in to it. Amazon Web Services suits cloud-first companies, web hosting and anyone who just needs commodity compute. There’s a lot of need for commodity compute, but it’s not most businesses.
The easiest path is gradual hybridisation: your normal upgrade cycle, one workload at a time. Think of it as the last big upgrade project you’ll do, and get it right, because you’ll be stuck with it. After this you’re on rolling patches, which bring a steady stream of change of their own.
Where the value is
- Communications. Mail, chat and meetings are already a network service, so moving them gives the most value: Exchange Online and Microsoft Teams.
- Software as a service. Applications designed for cloud give quite a lot: Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Jira.
- Platform as a service. Some value, by easing custom development or simplifying infrastructure: Azure SQL Database, Azure Cognitive Services.
- Infrastructure as a service. VMs in the cloud are the most expensive and least beneficial kind. Just paying someone else to run your VMs is kinda missing the point of cloud.
The vendor runs the software: it ships rolling updates, audits and supports your system, and builds features from telemetry. One subscription covers support, licensing, development and service management, at the best economies of scale. Most migration and upgrade costs go away, and so do most of the headaches.
The order to move
- Clean up on-premises. A straightforward architecture, systems that match the design, and old vendor packages gone where Microsoft’s own tools now do the job.
- Identity. Sync Active Directory to Azure AD with Azure AD Connect and turn on security defaults. A small business without servers can skip the local directory and join Windows 10 straight to Azure AD. Azure AD is really nice for small businesses: none of the complexity of AD, most of the benefits.
- Communications. Teams for chat, Exchange Online for mail. This may already be due: Exchange Server 2010 leaves support on 13 October 2020, and Skype for Business Online retires on 31 July 2021. Restrict who can create teams until the next step is planned.
- Files. OneDrive and SharePoint replace network drives and profile data. Start with Known Folder Move, then move SharePoint and Teams one team at a time. Syncing a library to the old file server and sharing it out works for big files, but staff lose co-authoring and version history.
- Applications that make sense. Ones with a good vendor migration path, or that benefit from a cloud topology, such as a CRM. Get rid of shadow IT and enforce single sign-on.
- Devices. Windows Autopilot and Intune, if you see value in replacing group policy and your deployment method. If not, it’s not urgent.
- Data. Power BI, with the on-premises data gateway bridging the cloud and your server room.
- ERP and SQL last. The consultants and developers in this area are conservative. Unless you’re reading migration case studies for your system, don’t be first.
Don’t skimp on the connection
If there’s one thing not to cheap out on when going cloud, it’s your connection. If a fast, redundant link is worth 50c an hour to each of 20 office staff, that’s $1,600 a month you should be willing to pay. Most of the time it’s cheaper and better to pay to have fibre run to the office. Gigabit-ish fibre with a millisecond or so to your local Microsoft data centre is what makes it truly irrelevant where you host your VMs and backups.
Get a partner
Find a migration specialist partner. Partners get an ongoing cut of your cloud fees, and many pass some of it back as a discount, so the bill can be a bit smaller than you’d expect. Don’t expect massive sticker shock.