The world is rapidly moving towards the cloud and for good reason. Cloud computing provides many benefits, such as increased flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency. AWS, Amazon’s cloud computing platform, is a leading provider of cloud services, and many companies are choosing to migrate to AWS to take advantage of its features.

Although the concept of cloud migration is simple, the process can be challenging. That’s why it’s essential to select the right experts to help you move your data securely. At Citrus Consulting, we are AWS-certified partners who can provide you with the necessary expertise for a smooth migration to AWS.

Typically, cloud migration involves a three-step process, beginning with an analysis of your current systems, workloads, and their distribution. This is followed by continuous optimization through re-engineering, re-factoring, and retention, and ultimately migrating your applications and data to AWS. Below, we have outlined the advantages of migrating to AWS cloud.

1. You Will Eliminate Infrastructure Budget Demands

There are several AWS services that can benefit small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) looking to eliminate hardware and administrative infrastructure costs as the business grows. Some of these services include:

1. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2): EC2 allows businesses to quickly provision virtual servers, providing the flexibility to scale up or down based on current loads.
2. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3): S3 provides scalable and cost-effective object storage, enabling businesses to store and retrieve any amount of data at any time.
3. Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS): RDS provides managed database services, simplifying database administration and lowering costs.
4. Amazon CloudFront: CloudFront is a content delivery network that accelerates the delivery of web content to users, improving the user experience and reducing costs.

By leveraging these services, businesses can eliminate the need for major hardware investments and reduce administrative costs. At Citrus Consulting, our enterprise customers have experienced significant cost savings and streamlined IT operations after migrating to AWS.

2. Greater Flexibility with Data Storage

Migrating to AWS provides businesses with a range of services that can help them to efficiently manage and store their data while optimizing costs. AWS offers a range of storage solutions such as Amazon S3, EBS, and Glacier that are designed to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes.

With Amazon S3, businesses can store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere at any time. Amazon EBS provides block-level storage volumes for use with Amazon EC2 instances, while Amazon Glacier is designed for data archiving and long-term backup. This range of services allows businesses to choose the storage solution that best suits their needs, providing greater flexibility and scalability.

By partnering with Citrus Consulting, businesses can take advantage of our expertise in AWS storage solutions. We can help businesses to migrate their data to the cloud, ensuring that it is stored securely and efficiently. Our services include data management, data backup and recovery, and disaster recovery solutions, all of which are designed to optimize costs while providing the highest level of data protection.

In summary, AWS cloud storage eliminates the need for businesses to make significant investments in hardware, software, and staff, while providing unlimited storage capacity. By partnering with Citrus Consulting, businesses can take advantage of the full range of AWS storage solutions, enabling them to manage and store their data efficiently, while optimizing their costs.

3. Disaster Recovery No Longer an Issue

With traditional IT infrastructure, disaster recovery can be a daunting and costly challenge for businesses. In the event of a disaster, internal or external, servers can crash and cause extensive damage. In the past, businesses have had to rely on external backup systems housed in a physical location, which is not a foolproof method as hardware failures are responsible for 45% of all unplanned downtime.

By migrating to AWS, businesses can eliminate the need for expensive disaster recovery measures. AWS provides robust disaster recovery solutions that are scalable, reliable, and cost-effective. Cloud-based disaster recovery procedures can be set up quickly and easily, and most processes can run automatically, saving businesses both human and hardware resources.

AWS services such as AWS Backup, AWS Disaster Recovery, and Amazon S3 Glacier can provide businesses with flexible, secure, and cost-effective disaster recovery solutions. Citrus Consulting can assist businesses in setting up AWS disaster recovery procedures, helping them to reduce the risk of data loss and downtime while optimizing their costs. Our expertise in AWS disaster recovery ensures that businesses can leverage the best practices and technologies available, enabling them to focus on growing their business without worrying about disaster recovery costs.

4. Fewer Issues with Applications

By migrating applications to the cloud, businesses can enjoy numerous benefits, including reduced workload for their IT departments. When applications are hosted in the cloud, scaling, capacity provision, and load balancing are automatic. This eliminates the need for IT teams to manually manage and monitor applications, resulting in fewer issues and less unplanned downtime.

With AWS, businesses can leverage various services, such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Elastic Load Balancing, to host and manage their applications in the cloud. EC2 provides scalable computing capacity in the cloud, while Elastic Load Balancing distributes incoming traffic across multiple EC2 instances, ensuring that applications can handle varying levels of traffic without downtime.

Citrus Consulting can help businesses make a seamless transition to AWS, providing expertise in application migration and management. Our team of experts can assist businesses in leveraging AWS services to host and manage their applications, ensuring maximum uptime and scalability while optimizing costs. With our help, businesses can focus on their core operations, while we take care of their cloud infrastructure needs.

5. Improved Security

AWS provides numerous security features and services to ensure that your infrastructure and data remain secure. By adopting AWS, you automatically benefit from the company’s extensive security expertise and best practices, which significantly reduces the burden on your in-house team. AWS allows you to automate security measures and monitor your infrastructure performance 24/7 without the need for manual intervention.

AWS offers a range of security services, including AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), which enables you to manage user access to your AWS resources, and Amazon GuardDuty, which provides intelligent threat detection and continuous monitoring for suspicious activity. Amazon Inspector is another useful security tool that automatically assesses applications for vulnerabilities and generates reports to help you address potential security issues.

AWS also provides encryption services, such as AWS Key Management Service (KMS), to help you secure your data and comply with regulatory requirements. AWS Firewall Manager helps you manage and enforce firewall rules across your entire infrastructure, while AWS Shield provides DDoS protection for your web applications.

In conclusion, AWS offers a wide range of security services and features that can help SMEs improve their security posture. By adopting AWS, you can automate security measures, monitor your infrastructure performance, and benefit from the company’s extensive security expertise and best practices, thus reducing the burden on your in-house team. AWS services such as AWS IAM, GuardDuty, Inspector, KMS, Firewall Manager, and Shield are all excellent options for enhancing your security.

Migration to the cloud can produce some anxiety on the part of an inexperienced IT staff. And while AWS makes it as easy as possible through its tutorials, that staff will have to take the time to move the company through the migration. This takes them away from other important business tasks. click here to learn more

Thus, at Citrus Consulting, we have experience of over 100+ cloud migration use cases, as Well Architected and Advanced Consulting Partner, we can help you define your cloud strategy and migration best practices.