The cloud has upturned more than just your clients’ businesses. It’s created substantial opportunities and challenges for MSPs as well – especially in the wake of pandemic-driven business model evolution.

An often-overlooked aspect of cyber resilience, that is as much process as it is protection and restoration, is cloud migration. Migrating servers, data, workflows, etc., between locations, or from physical to virtual infrastructure and vice versa, must be secure and reliable.

5 keys to picking the right tool for the job

From a functional standpoint, there’s a straight line between backup-and-restoration and cloud migration. Or, at least, there should be. In theory, your backup and restoration provider should be able to migrate the servers and data it backs up for you and your clients. In practice, few providers do it well (or reliably), which is why migration-related data loss and customer frustration are so common. Data migrations can be so painful, in fact, that they’re sometimes called the “final barrier to cloud adoption.”

You can avoid these headaches—and buy yourself some peace of mind—with the right migration tool. Here are five keys to selecting the right provider:

• Key #1: Pick a cloud migration solution that a genuine cyber resilience provider powers. Yep, it’s cliche to say that not all solutions are equal., But when it comes to backup, restoration and migration issues, you want a provider with solutions that get clients back up and running quickly. Companies with the technological oomph to keep clients running even during successful cyberattacks operate at a higher level of reliability and expertise. And that’s really what we’re talking about here – cloud migration is essentially a backup and restoration at a new location.
• Key #2: Choose a cloud migration solution that’s easy to use. A common complaint about cloud migration tools is that they’re complicated and cumbersome to use. Source the migration tool you rely on from a company established enough to have a UX team – not just engineers – on their product interface development.
• Key #3: Source a solution that’s capable of complex cloud migrations. Choose a tool that can migrate servers, data, applications, workflows … all of it. Otherwise, you can become mired down fixing broken processes and workflows even if you successfully migrate the corresponding data.
• Key #4: The cloud migration solution you rely on should scale with you and your customers. What good is a solution that doesn’t grow with you or can’t handle a large-scale migration for one of your key clients? When it comes to all things cyber resilience, size (and experience) really does matter. Look for a provider with a global reach that can handle migrations for multilocation and multinational customers.
• Key #5: Your cloud migration provider partner should support MSPs, not just end users. Your customers rely on you for things they can’t do —or don’t have time and resources to do do—themselves. The only way you can scale your own business is by working with a provider with a proven commitment to the channel and working with MSPs.