Way back in 2016, Microsoft purchased LinkedIn — which I believe was a very worthwhile investment. To this day, it remains the best business contact platform.
LinkedIn operated its own infrastructure including servers, networks and applications across a diverse list of data centre locations. In 2019, three years after the acquisition by Microsoft, LinkedIn announced plans for migration to Azure, moving away from its existing server and network infrastructure with a view to integration and leverage of their new relationship with Microsoft.
Migration to Azure made sense for LinkedIn — the purpose of integration and cost savings made sense since both were owned by Microsoft.
It makes sense to evaluate potential integration opportunities, however it also makes sense to weigh up cost, migration effort, ongoing BAU and support requirements before committing.
Here's where the challenges start for many businesses — especially Australian business owners who sign long-term contracts in US dollars for services which usually include add-ons not needed to run an application, yet they are "bundled" and all carry an additional ever-increasing cost.
Businesses are looking to save on costs, even more so now with inflation challenges presenting higher charges for just about everything. Carefully managing company budgets can go a very long way — especially for startups who may not yet be in revenue generation mode.
Just because something is big and surrounded by the lights of advertising as "on trend" doesn't necessarily mean it's suitable for all customers and applications.
Migration for the sake of migration rarely improves operational performance, nor does it reduce costs.
This is something many of our new customers have experienced first-hand. More than half of those customers used remaining monthly budgets to build staging and DR environments and hire additional staff — after cutting costs by moving to Cloud365.
Tailored services match requirements whilst providing the best opportunity to reduce costs.
Before committing to any cloud migration or platform change, we always recommend working through these questions:
What problem are you actually solving? If the current platform is performing well and costs are manageable, migration may introduce risk without proportionate benefit.
What does the full cost look like? Migration effort, testing, training, potential downtime and ongoing operational costs — not just the headline monthly rate.
What's included vs what's charged as an add-on? Monitoring, backups, support, domain names — many providers charge separately for services that Cloud365 includes as standard.
Who will support you when something goes wrong? Overseas support queues and automated ticketing systems are not the same as a phone call to a local engineer who knows your environment.
If you're considering a migration and would like an honest, independent assessment of your options, talk to our team. There's no obligation.
