8 steps to prepare your small business to move to the cloud

While corporations have led the charge towards cloud computing, businesses of all sizes are making the shift. For small businesses in Australia, cloud-based platforms deliver benefits including scalability, cost efficiency and enhanced security. However, many business owners are unsure where to begin.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the essential steps to prepare for a successful transition.

Before you dive into the technicalities of making the shift, take a step back and define your business goals and needs for cloud adoption. Some common goals include:

• Cost savings: Reduce the need for expensive physical servers and infrastructure and switch to pay-for-use subscriptions.
• Scalability: Enable your business to grow without the limitations of on-premises technology.
• Performance: Enhance the speed and reliability of your applications and services.
• Improved security: Strengthen data protection and cyber security.
• Innovation: Take advantage of world-class software and digital tools to deliver better solutions.

Whether it’s one or more of these goals, or something else, clearly understanding what you hope to gain from the move will help you make informed decisions and measure return on investment.

Before you make any changes, evaluate what you can keep and what needs updating. If you have limited IT skills in-house, you could benefit from engaging a trusty technology guide.

Whether you do it alone or get expert help, it’s recommended to take stock of all the applications, data and workloads you currently use and determine which are suitable for the cloud.

Key questions to ask include:

• Which applications are business-critical? What are the risks of disruption?
• Are there any legacy systems that need to be upgraded before migrating?
• How much data do you need to migrate, and where is it currently stored?
• Do you have any industry-specific security or compliance requirements?

Conducting a comprehensive assessment of your IT environment will help you decide which parts of your business are ready to move to the cloud and which may need more preparation.

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With over 50% market share¹, AWS is the world’s leading and fastest-growing cloud platform, growing faster than both Google and Microsoft². AWS is investing in an expanding suite of modern services that equip small businesses and their customers for the future. Some of the most common solutions for small businesses include:

• Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud): Provides scalable computing capacity to run your applications.
• Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service): Offers secure, scalable storage for data and files.
• AWS RDS (Relational Database Service): Simplifies database management with scalable, cost-effective cloud databases.
• AWS Lambda: A serverless compute service that lets you run code without managing servers.

Research the services that best align with your business needs, as this will make it easier to design a migration plan.

Migrating to AWS requires a considered plan to ensure minimal disruption to your business operations. Contact your NEXTGEN AWS trusty guide if you need help to map your plan to your objectives. There are several ways to migrate to the cloud, including:

• Lift and shift: Moving your existing applications and data to the cloud with little or no modification.
• Replatform: Making slight optimisations to your applications before moving them to AWS.
• Refactoring: Redesigning applications to take full advantage of cloud-native features.

Choose the approach that best fits your timeline, budget and technical capabilities.

• Prioritise workloads: Not all workloads need to be moved at once. Start with less complex, non-critical applications to test the process before migrating larger, mission-critical systems.
• Establish a timeline: Set realistic timelines for each stage of the migration process. This will help ensure that your move to the cloud doesn’t disrupt your day-to-day operations.

It is important to take an active role in safeguarding your data. Here’s how AWS can help you ensure security and compliance as you prepare for cloud migration:

• Use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM): IAM allows you to control access to AWS resources, ensuring only authorised personnel can access sensitive data and applications.
• Encrypt your data: Use AWS encryption tools like AWS Key Management Service (KMS) to protect your data both at rest and in transit.
• Implement monitoring tools: Leverage AWS CloudTrail and AWS CloudWatch to monitor your cloud environment for any unusual activity and to ensure compliance with industry regulations.

For businesses in regulated industries, like healthcare or finance, it's crucial to ensure that your migration plan meets compliance requirements specific to your sector.

Migrating to the cloud is not just a technical shift – it’s a cultural and operational change that will impact your people. Make sure your team is on board and ready for the move by:

• Training your staff: AWS offers various training and certification programs that can help your team build the necessary skills for managing cloud infrastructure.
• Engaging key people: Keep relevant team members involved in the process with clear communication to avoid confusion and ensure everyone understands the benefits.

Once your data and applications are in the cloud, your journey doesn’t end there. It’s important to:

• Test the environment: Ensure that everything is working as expected and that your applications perform well in the cloud.
• Optimise for cost: Use AWS tools like AWS Cost Explorer to monitor your cloud usage and optimise for cost savings. You may find opportunities to reduce expenses by adjusting your storage or computing resources.

If cloud migration feels overwhelming or beyond your technical expertise, consider working with a small business expert. 

NEXTGEN has a deep partnership with AWS and a track record of simplifying complexity and supporting small and medium business operations to achieve the outcomes that matter to them. Whether that’s optimising customer experience, productivity, process automation, security, fraud prevention, sales trend predictions, content creation or anything in between.

AWS has 240 cloud services to support your every workload and business need. But knowing what to invest in and just how to put these tools to work can be tough. 

As your trusted partner, we help you select and use the right tools so you can be customer-obsessed, adaptable and competitive – whatever you face.

References:

1. HG Insights, The AWS Ecosystem in 2024
2. CNBC, Amazon’s cloud margin widens on accelerating revenue growth, 202