Top tips on cloud migration

Make migration work for you

Flooid’s Ryan Bryers has worked in applications development, testing management, enterprise architecture and C-suite roles across three decades in IT. Our SVP – Engineering is convinced of the merits of cloud for retail and shares his advice on how and why to migrate.

1) Don’t make a cloud decision solely based on hardware cost-savings

“Moving to cloud will likely save you some money, but the right path is thinking about ‘business agility’. Think about what cloud can do for you; can it accelerate your working, enable innovation, will it transform or modernise what you currently have?

“You should also think about the “-ILITIES”. Scalability, so you never have to pay for capacity you don’t use, but can spin up to any size for any length of time. Repeatability and reliability, so your IT teams can move to higher-value tasks as opposed to ‘keeping the lights on’ activity. Availability, maintainability, securability, visibility, sustainability… these all improve with cloud.

“So yes, you can save money with cloud. But actually, the bigger pull is that cloud can help you to transform your entire operation and business agility, so you can out-perform your competitors, deliver for your customers, sell more and accelerate your social purpose.”

2) Consider why you want to keep your own hardware

“Retail’s a risk adverse business, and we do meet major retailers that want to stay on-premises, primarily on security grounds. We talk a lot in IT about being able to ‘touch the kit’, so I get that concern, but leading cloud providers have been spending tens of billions improving systems, and billions on improving security. Can your own in-house efforts deliver the same kind of spend and reassurance on security?

“Think about why you want to persevere with on-premises. Ask yourself, are culture and habits holding you back? Do you work somewhere that’s always hosted its own services, and that’s stopping you taking a different path? I’d encourage you to consider the full range of the -ILITIES, and then decide whether staying on-prem is right for your business.”

3) Don’t go piecemeal on a provider’s stack

“Go cloud native and you’re ready to shop! Cloud provider marketplaces offer an incredible array of ‘off-the-shelf’ capabilities from everything from personalisation to contact centre solutions, to marketing and sales optimisation. Retailers can pick these capabilities on a free thirty-day trial, try them in a few hours and see if they are right for their business. Once you start to see some of the tools and how quickly you can enable them, it can be a real game changer. And the marketplace is another lever for a business case, because the agility to enable these services can be of huge benefit to retailers, helping them to increase revenues, save cost, and deliver on sustainability and the customer experience.”

++ Flooid’s unified commerce platform is the pinnacle of cloud-based innovation. Our team has led cloud migration for some of the world’s largest retailers, delivering cost savings, revenue opportunities and business agility as standard. Learn more about Flooid Cloud in the Flooid Thinks: Ryan Bryers on cloud blog, Keeping our heads in the cloud blog and Flooid Cloud Technology White Paper.