Moving Your Custom Applications to the Cloud

When you’ve spent the time and money creating a custom application, it can be a big decision to move it over to the cloud, and one that you need to put a lot of thought into. Whilst the cloud is an amazing platform, it can be extremely difficult to navigate without proper training and many businesses don’t take full advantage of the additional benefits that are available to them.

In this blog, we’re discussing the challenges that businesses can encounter when moving their application over to the cloud and how the task can be made easier by working alongside a cloud specialist.

The challenges that software providers face

The main aim for providers these days is to stay ahead of the competition and provide innovative solutions that answer their customers’ constantly evolving needs. This often results in huge expenses, something which smaller businesses in particular can find hard to work into tight budgets.

Constant software development is also time consuming, often meaning that other IT projects slow down or are put on the back burner. This can result in even more expenses for the business and can often put smaller companies in a poor position when it comes to innovation and product development.

In addition to these issues, as the technology constantly changes, so does the requirement for developers' knowledge and understanding of how to use it. This is something which is often overlooked by management when attempting to keep up with what’s going on with competitors, putting additional stress on the IT team and often creating a need for specialist recruitment to manage more complex projects.

When there is such a vital requirement to be fast-paced and agile when it comes to product development, many businesses start looking for ways to make this easier and more financially viable, and this is where the cloud comes in.

The benefits of moving to the cloud

When done properly, the benefits of moving your software over to the cloud are quite significant.

The first and often most important is the potential cost savings. Moving online means that you no longer have to use data centres and on-site servers, instead effectively renting space from a host company and ending your hardware and facility costs. This allows you to spend more money on other areas of your business, which many choose to invest back into product development projects.

One of the other key features of cloud technology is how much easier it is for companies to scale their offerings. If, for example, your company goes through a period of significant growth, your software can move and grow with you, without the significant investment which usually goes hand in hand during such times.

The cloud is known for the additional security that it can offer businesses, with all data being backed up online as well as encrypted, making it more difficult to hack as well as easier to recover should the worst happen. This is a huge benefit to many, especially companies who have had the misfortune of experiencing security breaches in the past.

Potential issues with managing the cloud in-house

As a money saving exercise, often businesses make the decision to manage their move over to the cloud in-house, putting additional pressure on their IT team who often don’t have the experience or understanding to use the technology to the best of its ability.

This can also mean that other projects aren’t given the attention they need and can fall behind schedule, costing the business more money and creating issues for the future.

Choosing this route may seem like the cheaper option, but it often ends up costing more money than expected when resources are stretched and experts have to be brought in to fix issues that have occurred unexpectedly.

Working with cloud specialists

We always recommend working with a cloud specialist to provide expert advice and save you time and money when moving your application over to the cloud. Regardless of which cloud computing provider you use (the most common of which are Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure), they will have the knowledge and experience needed to ensure it is being used to the best of its abilities and giving your team everything they need.

They can also work with you right from the beginning stages to highlight any potential risks or issues and work through these before agreeing the best way forward, as well as suggesting ideas that you perhaps hadn’t thought about to get the most out of the migration.

How IG CloudOps can help

IG CloudOps are specialist Azure and AWS solution providers and we work with a wide range of businesses across a whole host of different industries looking for solutions for hosting their application on the cloud.

We use our expert knowledge to deliver services that enable our clients to utilise cloud technology more efficiently and effectively, saving on expenses and time resources within your existing team and letting you focus on other areas of the business.

Whether you’re already using the cloud or in the process of planning a move over, we are on hand to help manage and monitor your cloud deployment and ensure the process goes as smoothly as it can.

We have over 10 years’ experience working with the cloud, and our CloudOps has been developed especially to deliver a complete performance and support service for your organisation. CloudOps brings together all of the functions, processes and features that you need to manage your application within the cloud, doing the hard work for you by automating the day-to-day management at a fixed monthly cost. 

If you’re looking to move your software to the cloud, or are in the process of doing so, you can read more about this topic in our white paper ‘A guide to moving your application or solution to the cloud’.