As digital transformation begins to touch every industry, every business, and every organization, the need to move applications and platforms to the cloud is greater than ever. However, organizations of all sizes may still be wondering how they can leverage cloud technologies to improve their business strategy, especially when it comes to Flexcube implementation and migrating their infrastructure to the cloud. A cloud migration plan can help you stay on top of your digital transformation curve.
A bank’s cloud migration strategy is a complex process that must be undertaken with care. While the benefits of moving to the cloud are clear, the migration plan must take into account a number of factors, including how to manage risk and costs.
What Is a Cloud Migration or Cloud Banking Migration?
A “cloud migration” refers to the process by which an organization migrates its business applications and infrastructure to the cloud. Cloud-based services can be used for many of the same purposes as traditional on-premises solutions, including learning management, customer relationship management, and other business processes, but in the cloud, applications are hosted and managed by a third party.
Why Migrate in the First Place?
There are many reasons a bank might decide to migrate to the cloud. Some of the most common include:
- Cloud migration can help banks set expectations. A bank’s cloud migration strategy will help to set a course for the future and set expectations for the organization. Making sure to set realistic expectations for the migration will help to increase the odds of a successful transition to the cloud.
- A Cloud Migration Can Help Mitigate Risk: A cloud migration can help mitigate the risks associated with both physical and virtual security. Cloud providers can work in tandem with a bank to ensure that any data that is shared is encrypted and safe.
- A Cloud Migration Can Help Calm Some Nerves: Although many banks are moving away from using the cloud, it still makes up a significant portion of the technology ecosystem. Moving to the cloud can help a bank keep up with technological advances while also offering a potential solution to some of the overcrowding issues that have been occurring in data centers.
How Do You Create a Detailed Cloud Migration Plan for a Bank?
A cloud migration plan is a crucial piece of creating a successful migration. The following are a few of the steps that you will need to take in order to create a detailed plan:
- A detailed roadmap for the cloud migration journey: Start by creating a detailed, linear map of your migration. You will need to show how you got from your starting point to your destination, which is the cloud. The best way to do this is to take a look at your entire organization and determine your starting egress and ingress points.
- An identified cloud service provider: You will need to decide on a vendor for your Flexcube cloud-based services. Basically, this is your “cloud service provider.” Your choice of provider should be made after significant research and evaluation.
- Disruptive competitive forces in the industry: Be sure to evaluate your industry from a local and global standpoint. You will need to make a judgment call on whether or not your organization is ready to adapt to the cloud. This can be a difficult decision and should be discussed amongst peers and in-house tech experts.
- Current infrastructure challenges: If you are starting your cloud migration from scratch, you will need to address your current challenges with legacy infrastructure. It will pay off to document challenges with your current infrastructure and how those challenges can be addressed with the cloud.
- Industry-specific challenges: Every industry has its own unique challenges, and you will need to analyze each one of your bank’s challenges. You will need to decide whether cloud adoption is the solution or if your bank will require a specific custom configuration to fit your needs.
- Unique benefits of cloud migration: The cloud has its own unique benefits, which will pay off for your organization. You need to be able to communicate the unique benefits of cloud migration to your organization. You will want your team to see the unique benefits for themselves.
- The identified cloud migration leader and migration team: Your organization will need to be led by someone who is responsible for the overall migration project. You will also need to identify who will be on your migration team. Your migration team will be comprised of individuals who have the authority to make decisions and who have the ability to provide input into the migration process.
- Details of the proposed cloud-based architecture: You need to define in detail the proposed cloud-based architecture to be used for migration. This includes the selection of the specific cloud computing vendor, the selection of the type of cloud infrastructure to be used, and the identification of the specific cloud computing services to be used.
- Information on how to effectively meet security and compliance requirements: A gap analysis needs to be conducted to determine if there are security and compliance requirements that are not currently being met. You need to determine how the migration will impact these requirements and how to effectively meet them. This analysis should include an evaluation of the security and compliance needs of the different business units involved, as well as an evaluation of the security and compliance requirements of the data being moved.
- A list of deadline-driven key milestones: You need to identify any specific milestone-based deadlines that need to be met. These could include the need to meet regulatory or legal requirements or the need to initiate the migration prior to the expiration of a critical contract.
- A strategy for core modernization: You need to develop a strategy for what kinds of legacy core systems will be migrated and exactly how they will be modernized. Any modernization strategy needs to take into consideration the need to balance the need to modernize the legacy core system with the need to keep the legacy core system up and running throughout the migration project.
What Does Cloud Migration Look Like?
A cloud migration enables organizations to move workloads, services, and data to a cloud service provider. Cloud service providers offer virtual machines and storage that can be used as a platform for applications and services.
Cloud migration can be as simple as migrating an organization’s email service to a cloud service provider or as complex as migrating a series of applications and services to the cloud, enabling an organization to operate independently of its IT infrastructure.
The Challenge of Addressing Core Modernization in a Cloud Migration Plan
The core of an organization’s IT environment is its data center. A successful cloud migration must address the modernization of the data center as part of the process.
Migrating to a cloud service provider is a process of extracting data and applications from the core data center and delivering them to the cloud. A data center must be modernized, and the data center infrastructure must be digitized and virtualized before a cloud migration can take place.
Conclusion:
Upgrading existing technology systems with the latest cloud-based applications, such as Oracle Flexcube can offer significant benefits, such as increased agility, efficiency, and scalability. The initial migration costs, however, will vary widely depending on the size of the organization and the complexity of the applications that are being migrated. Regardless of the cost, cloud migration is becoming a necessary part of any successful digital transformation strategy.
