The importance of a cloud exit strategy.

Moving your applications and infrastructure into clouds is very common these days. Getting in seems easy, but how about getting out? What happens when your cloud provider fails, is too expensive or you are having a conflict? If this happens, you need to be able to move your operations elsewhere. This is why it is important to have a clear cloud exit strategy.

Have an exit plan

Having a plan in case an exit is imminent and will save you time, frustration, stress, and potentially, data. Expect the unexpected when first joining a cloud. It may sound strange to consider how to leave a cloud vendor before even joining it, but any enterprise should consider this to make the right choices. There are long term consequences to not having a working exit strategy when moving to a cloud vendor. Vendor lock-in is not what you want. Investing in cloud services puts you in a vulnerable position whenever there are reasons to leave your vendor. Besides high expenses to end a cloud relationship, there needs to be a plan to evacuate your vital data.

So, an exit, what then?

A thorough assessment needs to be made of what platforms and middleware you have ( For example Oracle or IBM) when you want to change clouds. WeTransfer will not do the job. Make sure you have working mechanisms that can transport your systems to other provider and they are up to date. This eases the migrations considerably.  This allows you to decide what to do without the headache of how to do it! Talk to references. You can try and find out from your cloud vendor how to exit but I bet an incomplete answer is what you will get…. Consultants? Nah……, you need hands-on expertise with a sound knowledge of systems and dependencies.

Let us help you.

We at Enterprise Modules have been helping our customers with these types of questions a lot. So if you need help working out your exit strategies, don’t hesitate to contact us. Interested? Please contact us for more information.