Are you using Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud but have not moved your legacy systems over?

With the success of Microsoft 365 & Teams, everything appears to be moving to the cloud - but what about the stuff left behind?

Cloud computing is gaining traction amongst businesses across industries and it’s not hard to see why. The cloud offers a competitive edge to companies, especially when it comes to security, scalability, and costs. According to a survey by Microsoft Office 365, nearly 94% of

small business owners appreciate the extra security provided by the cloud. The convenience of your data being accessible from any location at any time also ties into the additional security: even if something were to happen to the hardware, companies don’t risk losing vital business information. Many of the popular cloud providers also handle issues such as keeping unwanted traffic at bay or carrying out automatic security updates. Scalability is another major perk. The cloud allows companies to scale up and down based on their IT needs. This can be critical for industries where businesses need to adapt lightning-fast to the ever-changing customer demands. With the cloud, rapidly reshaping your IT infrastructure to accommodate what your customers need today is entirely possible.

For these and many other reasons, companies around the globe are embarking on a cloud migration. A serious issue stems from leaving valuable data stores - such as your customer details or logs with business transactions - behind when migrating the majority of your business operations to the cloud. Many businesses only choose to migrate the legacy infrastructure, hardware, or software that’s considered outdated, is often not supported, but it’s still in use. Moving these to the cloud is a fantastic solution to minimise security risks, as well as prevent business downtime, but you should also go beyond these.

Customer details and business transactions often end up stored on-premise, in a physical location, in servers, or in desktop applications. In a cloud-based infrastructure, however, you can actually utilise your customer data to drive insights for smarter decision-making: something that’s not really possible if they’re “collecting dust” in a server on-site. If nothing else, keeping these valuable data stores in a physical location leads to an increased risk of a security breach or hardware failure that might damage or destroy the physical infrastructure. The best way to protect yourself, your business, and your customers’ information is by ensuring they too follow the rest of your business operations and move your vital data history to the cloud.

Transferring your valuable data history and storing it in a way that’s both secure and easy to access can be a challenge. However, this should be a critical step in any company’s migration process to minimise security risks and protect your business reputation.