Cloud Solutions

How Long Does it Take to Move to the Cloud?

By / December 11, 2018

Even when making a significant internal change like moving to the cloud, most businesses can’t afford downtime. That’s why one of the most frequently asked questions about transitioning a business to the cloud is, “How long will it take?”

Businesses who decide to make the transition using internal resources typically aim to get up and running in a couple of months. However, companies that make the switch on their own, often run into unexpected obstacles that can delay the process for months on end.

If your company is thinking about moving its data and business activities to the cloud, working with an IT provider is the best way to make sure your transition happens quickly and with limited downtime.

If your company is thinking about moving its data and business activities to the cloud, working with an IT provider is the best way to make sure your transition happens quickly and with limited downtime. In fact, businesses that use AppSmart as their cloud services provider can expect to be fully deployed in less than 2 weeks – with virtually no downtime.

While we get most businesses up and running in an average of 10 days, the complexity of the move will ultimately determine the timeline.

These three factors affect the time it takes to move a business’ data to the cloud:

1. Size of the Business

Bigger businesses are more likely to have a large amount of data and/or complex networks. When this is the case, the transition to the cloud will typically take longer.

2. Age of the Business

Like bigger businesses, older businesses typically have more data as well as a greater number of legacy systems and processes that need to be converted. Often, transitioning data from older legacy systems is more complex and requires some additional time.

3. Services Used

If your business relies primarily on commodity services like email, data storage or phones, moving your business to the cloud should be fairly simple. However, if your business relies on industry-specific differentiated services, the conversion process require a more complex solution and will typically take more time.

What About Training?

When companies use AppSmart as their cloud services provider, we take care of nearly all of the tasks and requirements relating to the move. Most employees aren’t even aware that a “transition” is taking place until they are up and running in the cloud.

Once companies have moved their data to the cloud, many think that the “transition period” is over. Often, companies that have made the switch using internal resources will experience a steep learning curve with the new system. Without a thorough onboarding and training plan in place, it can take months for employees to become comfortable using cloud-based applications.

When businesses use AppSmart to move to the cloud, we provide a full training and deployment process that requires very little time from employees. We get your employees up to speed with 1-2 webinars and on-demand end user training.