Take Inventory to Estimate Costs

Issue No. 5: Take inventory to estimate costs

When planning for your migration to the cloud, start by using a file-discovery tool on your file servers to identify which files fit the cloud-worthy criteria mentioned above. With this knowledge, you can get a good estimate of what your cloud storage costs will be and compare it for different cloud storage providers.

Issue No. 6: Separate files from applications

You'll probably want to separate applications from their user-created files, keeping the applications local to minimize network bandwidth consumption. File discovery tools can you help you winnow these files from their applications.

Issue No. 7: Software or operating system migration

Upgrading to the latest version of Windows or Microsoft Office? File and application compatibility is a big enough challenge for local enterprise networks; files and applications stored in the cloud only compound the challenge. When upgrading your desktop software, make sure to employ file discovery and remediation tools on your cloud-based data to ensure your files will continue to work. Rather than trying to remediate potentially problematic files in the cloud, you'll want to pull them to the local network to perform the remediation (or remediate them before migrating them to the cloud).

Issue No. 8: Compression and encryption

Tools are available to enable you to compress, encrypt and single-instance your files (eliminate duplicate copies) when they are moved to the cloud. These tools are designed to significantly reduce the file-storage footprint required and improve security. Use them.

Conclusion

It costs roughly $3,500 per terabyte per year to manage your business data. (The cost of storage is extra.) Moving a big chunk of your storage requirements to the cloud can cut those costs by half or more-not to mention all the other compelling benefits gained by embracing the cloud. But cloud storage is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Businesses need to carefully plan their cloud storage strategies and identify which files will deliver the best value when stored in a cloud environment.

Chip Bates is director of product development for ConverterTechnology and has been in this role since 2008. Since June 2006, Chip has been SQA (software quality assurance) manager for ConverterTechnology, as well. In this role, he has established and managed all aspects of SQA. In addition, Chip manages the customer assessments process, provides customer support, and defines and schedules product enhancements. Chip brings 10-plus years of experience in SQA and management at GreatPlains and, most recently, Microsoft. He can be reached at cbates@convertertechnology.com.