Today cloud adoption is no longer a choice for businesses but has become a crucial step in their digital transformation journey. Enterprises have begun their on-premises to cloud migration for its undisputed array of benefits. Initially, businesses used services from only one cloud platform for their storage and computational needs. Today, the scenario has evolved into a multi-cloud environment.
Nowadays, enterprises not only have a multi-cloud environment but also tend to move their data from one cloud to another (For example, Dropbox to Google Drive).
Continue reading this blog to know what a multi-cloud approach is, its importance, how to transfer data between two different clouds, and the top things to consider before adopting a cloud-to-cloud migration tool.
What is a multi-cloud approach?
A multi-cloud environment is where enterprises utilize services from more than one cloud vendor to get the best features. For example, a company might store some of its data in Microsoft Azure and run its enterprise applications in Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Why do businesses adopt a multi-cloud approach?
There are several benefits of moving to the cloud from outdated legacy infrastructure. But why do companies prefer to adopt a multi-cloud approach? Here are some of the prime reasons are listed below:
Flexibility
In today’s dynamic digital world, companies are not ready to settle for the limited service offerings of any one cloud platform. Instead, they want more flexibility and choice to get the best features from more than one cloud vendor. For example, businesses also migrate the chat data across two clouds, like Slack to Microsoft Teams, for better features and user experience.
Avoid vendor lock-in
Enterprises are looking to reduce vendor lock-in issues and be entirely dependent on a single cloud provider through a multi-cloud strategy.
Improved cost management
Businesses can choose services based on the best pricing plans in a multi-cloud environment. It helps them manage their overall operational costs and improve savings.
Improved reliability and resilience
Using services from a single cloud platform might increase the risk of outages. Whereas a multi-cloud approach helps improve the resilience and reliability of the company’s IT infrastructure and mitigate the associated risks.
Reduced latency
Reduced latency and improved performance are among the top benefits of adopting a multi-cloud strategy, which distributes data across several geographic locations.
Why do businesses transfer data from one cloud to another?
When starting, a company might store its data in a particular cloud owing to the features offered by it. But eventually, there might be new requirements to execute enterprise applications or changes in their data workload volume that require a different set of features. However, during such cases, the enterprise looks forward to transferring files from one cloud to another.
For example, a company might migrate from DropBox to Google Drive due to multiple service offerings like email, chat, video conferencing, Calendar, etc., for a single Google Workspaces account.
How can you migrate data from one cloud to another?
Conventionally we need to download every file from one cloud and upload it into another. However, it is not feasible when the file size is too large, or the enterprise needs more resources for manual execution and monitoring.
New-age cloud-to-cloud data migration tools like CloudFuze have replaced traditional data migration methods. These tools help users to migrate data files between two clouds in no time without any hassle. In addition, they considerably reduce the efforts of in-house IT admins, making the entire process simpler.
Essential things to consider before choosing a cloud data migration tool.
End-to-end support
The cloud migration tool must provide holistic end-to-end support in the data migration journey. In addition, the platform must be able to smoothly transition across the various stages by giving the required tech support and reducing the burden of the IT team.
Compatibility with multiple cloud providers
Ensure that the chosen cloud-to-cloud data migration tool is compatible with the source and destination clouds defined in your data migration plan. Also, it helps meet the individual business requirements unique to each company.
Feature-rich platform
Analyze and compare the various features offered by multiple cloud data migration tools. Some of the must-have features for increased efficiency and performance are as follows:
- Migrate files with shared permissions, embedded links, comments, and internal links.
- One-time (complete migration) and delta migration (Migrates only the changes from source to target).
- Map the same user accounts across source and destination clouds.
- Auto-retry feature when encountering a failure or unavailability.
- High security with data encryption and compliance.
- Provision for status notifications and detailed reports.
- Supports chat data migration. (For example, Slack to Microsoft teams).
- Offers free trial to know how the platform works.
- Flexible licensing and cost-efficient model.
Pre-migration assessment
A good cloud data migration platform must offer a pre-migration assessment as a part of its service suite. It helps arrive at the best possible solutions and meets the prerequisites for cloud-to-cloud data migration. Migration plans, recommendations, data migration best practices, disaster recovery, etc., are defined in this stage to overcome any issues.
Take away
A multi-cloud environment is a new mantra for businesses to become more flexible and resilient and avoid vendor lock-ins. Tackle the challenges of file transfer from one cloud to another by leveraging the potential of cloud data migration tools. With the right cloud migration tool with the right set of features, moving data to any desired cloud has never been so much simpler.
