The statistics from Gartner tell us that cloud migrations of data from large enterprise organizations will continue to increase through 2020. By that time 36% of all financial enterprise organizations will have moved their data to the cloud.

This number includes financial and accounting firms of all sizes.

Once your organization has made the decision to migrate critical business functions to the cloud, what steps are necessary to manage the process?

This post explores some tips for easing CPA firms into managed cloud service. What do you need to know before migrating crucial services from on-premise to the cloud?

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Easing the Migration to Cloud Computing

There are roughly seven key task categories that will help your organization shift workflows and data into the cloud:

1. The first step is to create a task list or project scope document that works out the what, why, and how’s of the IT migration process. Will this be done in increments or in one big bang and how will it potentially disrupt operations if all goes as planned – or if it doesn’t?
2. Next, inventory all workflows and assets. What configurations will need to be changed in order to accommodate cloud infrastructures? What will be the process of decommissioning equipment after the migration is complete?
3. The third step is creating a schedule for the migration and communicating it to all stakeholders. It’s also very important to work out a testing and training mechanism and seek employee buy-in so they understand the benefits of the migration.
4. Step four is developing contingency plans and disaster recovery mechanisms as backups. Creating new security protocols to accommodate cloud services is crucial. Developing new user groups and accounts are part of the process as well.
5. Before going live, you must test all applications and software. You can do this by creating virtual machines in the cloud, or run tests on a backup on-premise machine. Ultimately, you want to be certain everything is running smoothly before the data cutover occurs.
6. The go-live and cutover process must be hand-managed by your technology team and watched closely as it occurs. If you’re using an external managed cloud services company like TOSS C3, there is a transition team standing by to manage this process and troubleshoot any issues that could occur.
7. The final part of the process that we highly recommend is documentation of the process and an evaluation of what worked well and what could be improved upon should a similar migration happen in the future.

Learn more about how TOSS C3 can help your accounting firm: — 

Who Can Help with Managed Cloud Services?

If this sounds like a lot of work for your IT team to handle, you are correct. That’s where a managed cloud services provider could help your organization. Managed cloud services leverage a team of IT experts who have completed these data migrations with other companies. They have the experience that your existing IT team typically does not have, along with the extra engineers needed to help you accomplish successful migration to the cloud. After the migration, the managed cloud service provider can also stay on to help monitor your new network functions in the cloud.

Request a quote on cloud managed services today.