What should be stored in the cloud?

In recent years, we’ve seen more and more businesses choosing to move parts of their operation to the cloud, because of the many benefits this offers. But the transition to cloud services also raises questions about what actually should and should not be stored in the cloud. In this blog, we hope to be able to clear up a few common questions about what your business should store in the cloud and how best to prepare yourselves.

Draw up a clear plan with a cloud strategy

To prepare the business ahead of the transition to cloud services, it’s important that you have a well-considered strategy for it. As a whole, a cloud strategy is all about reviewing and preparing yourselves for the way in which the transition will affect your existing systems, integrations, functions and solutions, and what impact it will have on employees and customers. With a well-considered strategy, you create the right conditions for your business being able to utilise all the benefits and opportunities of the cloud, while avoiding common risks and confusion that can otherwise arise. In the planning phase, it’s also important to formulate and explain what the aim of the move to the cloud actually is in the organisation. Is the primary goal to increase innovation? To create more efficient processes? To be more cost-efficient? Whatever the goal you’re aiming to achieve, it’s important that it is linked to the business’s overarching goals, so that they can facilitate each other.

Investigate the requirements your business has to meet  

When working on the strategy, it’s important that you investigate which regulatory requirements your business is affected by. It is particularly important for the public sector, financial institutions and other sectors that are subject to strict regulation to have a good insight into what legislation there is, and how it affects the storage and processing of data. This is, of course, an important step regardless of what kind of operation you are running.

This is what you should store in the cloud

It is often a good idea to store internal company documents, processes or solutions in the cloud.This makes it easy for employees to access these documents wherever they are, and contributes to increased productivity and flexibility. It also takes efficiency to a totally new level, as it’s easier to save and store company data, and to use solutions as required. When deciding which internal company data is to be saved in the cloud, it’s important that you think both long-term and strategically, to create a solution that will work for many years to come. This should be decided when you plan your cloud strategy.

Here are a few examples of what can be stored in the cloud:

1. The organisation’s key services and data
   Mobile devices and applications offer quick access to the organisation’s key services and data, which is absolutely crucial to enabling effective remote working for your employees.
2. Collaborative platforms and content management
   Cloud-based collaborative platforms create more efficient remote working. Most organisations benefit greatly from using collaborative platforms, and most are suitable to run in the cloud.
3. Solutions that are used rarely, but require major capacity
   As a general rule, work processes that are used rarely, but that require major capacity when they are used, are ideal to run in the cloud.
4. Scalable applications
   Applications that can easily be scaled up or down benefit from being placed in the cloud, as the cloud is also scalable.

What you should not store in the cloud

Regardless of which regulatory requirements you have to meet, there is some information that should not be stored in the cloud. Although the cloud is generally considered a secure place to process data and information, there is always the risk of a breach. This means that it’s important not to store certain data and information in the cloud, such as unique or sensitive company information.Examples of this are personal data, information about employees and health declarations, payroll information or information about customers. The cloud is actually not unsafe, it’s rather about protecting some kinds of information from ever leaving designated systems and security mechanisms.

To define what should and should not be stored in the cloud, you need to produce an internal inventory of data and information classification, and this too should be done in the strategy phase.A high level of security means sensitive information, and should therefore be handled in a certain way, while less sensitive data can be saved in a number of different ways, of which the cloud is one.

Get closer to the power of the cloud

Once you’ve produced an inventory of what should, and should not, be stored in the cloud, it’s time to migrate there. At Nordlo, we have extensive experience of cloud solutions and have helped many different businesses, organisations and public sector bodies to migrate all or some of their IT environment into the cloud.