Moving data to the cloud is top of mind for most organisations today, yet many struggle with effectively migrating on-premise workloads into cloud environments, as one of the most often overlooked considerations in this process is cloud readiness.

When talking about 'cloud readiness' we are essentially talking about two very different aspects - technical and business considerations elements.

In both cases it's all about making sure that, as data grows and new technology comes into the mix, you have a simplified and unified way of ensuring your organisation is completely 'cloud ready' while also making sure your cloud 'mix' is capable of meeting current and future business requirements too.

Here, it's important for organisations to deploy a solution that can take care of their data migration requirements in a single unified approach, and that can respond to the demands of a growing asset that needs to be managed. Yet, this approach also needs to give you the capability to look at your critical resources without having to delve down into too many layers.

These issues with cloud migration are becoming increasingly relevant in the local market as the shift towards cloud gains momentum exponentially, in the same way that is happening globally. Organisations can no longer afford to delay implementing effective cloud strategies, or they will risk losing out to competitors whose cloud migration plans are prioritised and actively promoted.

Gartner describes the shift of enterprise IT spending to new, cloud-based alternatives as 'relentless', predicting that enterprise IT spending on cloud-based offerings will grow faster than traditional (non-cloud) IT offerings through 2022. By 2022, cloud shift across key enterprise IT markets will increase to 28%, up from 19% in 2018 – and that's quite a significant uptick.

Equally a LogicMonitor report states that 83% of enterprise workloads will be in the cloud by 2020, and of this, 41% of enterprise workloads will be run on public cloud platforms. An additional 20% are predicted to be private-cloud-based, with another 22% running on hybrid cloud platforms.

All of this underlines that aside from people, data has become one of the most important assets for organisations operating in today's digital economy. The move to cloud has been a fundamental under-pinning element of the digital transformation boom, but has also resulted in unprecedented challenges to managing, using and securing data.

This is especially the case in multi-cloud environments, where data sources are disparate and exist in (and across) many different formats and standards. Organisations must be able to extract and elaborate insights from this data that feed their daily enterprise decisions.

Effective data management translates into the ability to manage every aspect of enterprise data including integrity, security, availability and usability.

So, while cloud adoption is a major priority for many enterprises, they need to carefully consider what this means for their data and backup, as well as their data management strategy. Migrating to the cloud without weighing up the implications for your data could prove to be a crucial mistake, so businesses must have effective data management in place to ensure they are multi-cloud ready.

To meet the demand of the modern age, businesses need to be able to seamlessly make provision for and add compute, memory, networking and storage resources at will. But, at the same time, the growing trend towards multi-cloud strategies is driving a symbiotic discussion about data management, migration and security too.

The right partner can help you assess your cloud readiness and assist with managing your data in the cloud, at the same time lowering cost, reducing risk and improving your organisation's agility, as well as automating your disaster recovery strategy.

In other words, choosing the right partner might prove to be as important as the actual decision to choose which flavour of cloud solutions and platforms to use in the first place – so make that choice carefully!

By Modeen Malick, Senior Systems Engineer for MESAT at Commvault.