Key considerations in maintaining distributed office productivity with successful cloud migrations

In the last 90 days, in every industry sector, business as we know it has completely changed. The existing pandemic has paved the way for an extreme acceleration of digital transformation initiatives with a heavy focus on cloud, security and collaboration technologies.

According to an AlphaWise Q12020 CIO survey, CEOs and CIOs have transitioned a significant portion of their spending focus in FY20 to cloud-based activities. This redirection of budget aligns to the immediate shift in business strategy in which continuity through digital transformation takes precedent over other planned investments. The investment in cloud-based technologies and acceleration of existing cloud migration projects has driven, and will continue to do so, the model of the “new distributed office”.

Workplaces that have strong flexible working policies in play and have already invested in cloud-based technologies and completed cloud migration projects are ahead of the curve. They are familiar with the concept of a distributed office. They are executing on their well-built cloud strategy, and they are now shifting their focus to end-user quality of experience and quality of assurance through performance and application monitoring solutions to keep their remote teams productive.

These types of workplaces are typically large multinational companies and are not indicative of all enterprise businesses across the world. The idea of a distributed workforce is new to many industries that have traditionally had an in-person presence requirement and have built their business and IT infrastructures on that foundation. These workplaces are just beginning their digital transformation initiatives and executing these successfully will determine their longevity and competitiveness in the market. 

Right now, almost everyone working from home is embracing the distributed office model – being able to work from anywhere, on any device, and accessing cloud-based technologies on a daily basis to do their job. And guess what? The model is working! Business is reporting productivity in its workforce rated as neutral or higher, video calls are rated effective, messenger, and sharing tools are rated very effective and people who are traditionally located out of headquarters feel more included.

As restrictions ease and the new norm of the distributed office is embraced, more and more employees will demand the flexibility afforded by the distributed office model. They have, after all, proven it works and earned the right to embrace the full flexibility that cloud-based technology brings. 

Successfully migrating to the cloud – what does it take?

The shift to a more distributed office means more employees work in a hybrid fashion from home, from the office, from other family homes, and from the road, accessing the cloud. As businesses plan their digital transformation initiatives, one of the key considerations in this march forward is how to assure a successful cloud migration.

One of the biggest challenges in moving to the cloud is application visibility. Traditionally, with enterprise businesses, IT infrastructure was located on-premises and was easily managed and monitored for performance by its locality. The biggest challenge with the cloud occurs during migrations, and once an application has migrated over, all visibility and performance metrics are lost. This is due to the fact that the majority of traditional on-premises monitoring tools do not work in the cloud.

To successfully manage a cloud migration from start to finish and to ensure end-user quality of experience, enterprise businesses need 360° visibility of all network traffic, throughout the migration process, with performance monitoring solutions.

Key considerations in undertaking any successful cloud migration is understanding the benefit of a real-time steam analysis of packets. This means that all packets are analyzed as they cross the wire in real-time, and KPIs and session per-packet intel (or metadata) is extracted from the packets as they arrive.

Apart from the benefits of real-time analytics and quicker time to resolution of issues, another added benefit of utilizing this solution is that the capture instrument does not place a heavy traffic load on the cloud. Nobody wants to pay twice for data, and poor planning and design may cause unexpected bandwidth and hosting charges which ultimately delays the migration.

Monitoring a cloud migration is not a one-time event, it’s a process. Application workloads need performance monitoring post-migration to baseline the user experience and ensure optimal performance and end–user experience.

To learn more about successful migrations to the cloud, download our guide.