Cloud Migration Requires a Plan
In the early days of cloud services, many organizations leapt before they looked. Eager to capitalize on economies of scale and the inherent promise of cost savings, corporate boards and C-level executives instructed their IT departments to adopt a cloud-first mentality. IT teams were expected to shift applications and workloads to cloud services providers as quickly as possible, with no time for the necessary readiness assessments or migration services that would ensure a good outcome.
While this strategy worked well in many cases, it proved far from flawless across the board. Many organizations discovered it’s relatively easy to jump into the cloud, but doing it right from the very beginning isn’t. Some legacy applications just don’t work well across distributed architectures, it’s difficult to control costs and secure access to data and resources when those things are managed by a 3rd party, and – of course — there’s always GRC requirements to consider.
Solution: Cloud Readiness Assessments and Migration Services
Even today, when multicloud adoption is rampant, a truly solid approach to the cloud involves a blueprint. Complexities exist whether an organization is finally ready to embrace its first SaaS app or whether a single virtual workload is being moved from one hosting service to another. Only after careful planning and consideration of all aspects of an environment and its interdependencies should organizations consider a roll out – that is a must for a successful and hassle-free experience.
When considering cloud, select a partner that can provide expertise in strategy development, designing business-grade cloud architectures, simplifying application migration and accelerating cloud adoption.
Structured offers a full complement of cloud readiness assessments and migration strategy services to help any organization take full advantage of the cloud while minimizing costs and reducing risk.
Cloud Readiness Assessments
A Cloud Readiness Assessment from Structured includes:
- Strategic plan and IT roadmap review (standard gap analysis)
- Selected technology maturity assessment
- Serviceability/Supportability assessment
- Infrastructure integration assessment
- Application fit assessment
- High-level cloud design


Structured Professional Spotlight
Chris McDuffie, Vice President Cloud Architecture
As the VP of Cloud Architecture for Structured, Chris manages strategies for application delivery and hybrid cloud infrastructures. His 30+ years of experience in business operations, IT leadership, and consulting enable him to focus on business strategies that promote secure collaboration, growth and employee engagement. Chris is also an avid hiker, spending as much spare time as possible trekking through Disney parks.