The Cloud is a massive new frontier for business as well as technology. Although the virtual space empowers companies with new tools, resources, scalability, security and myriad other benefits; it can quickly become more expensive than initially expected if not handled properly.

Taking a few proactive steps at the outset can help minimize unexpected costs and avoid unforeseen money drains while setting your company up to get the most out of the new platform. These four tips below should be on the top of the Cloud migration ‘to-do’ list:

Proper Procedure and Documentation

Establishing clear, repeatable and scalable procedures, protocols and documentation right at the beginning will streamline your migration while creating a case study for the big move. Proper process can significantly reduce the margin of error and mitigate wastefulness in all matters of engaging a new platform for your business.

This is also an opportunity to establish visibility and set up the teams and designations of who does what and how things work. Documentation is another important piece of this puzzle, as you’ll benefit greatly from taking detailed notes every step of the way and applying what you’ve learned.

Tools Are Your Friend

The Cloud is awash with all sorts of cool tools, many of which are approachable in price, or even free in many cases. Taking advantage of these resources will not only hasten your pace in the competitive space, but also help you to effectively leverage your upgraded assets and visualize and react optimally within the new environment.

Because the Cloud is all about collaboration and interaction with multiple parties, you’ll want to employ tools with monitoring and alert functionality to maintain the utmost visibility on your systems. Balancing usage vs allocation will also become a key issue that is well remedied with the right software.

Proper IT support

Perhaps one of the gravest mistakes a company can make is diving into the Cloud without the proper technology support – namely your core IT team. Not only is this type of change a very intensive technical undertaking requiring the expertise of a tech professional, you’ll need ongoing support in the form of a savvy human (help guides and online resources only go so far).

Whether you employ an IT crew in-house or you’ve hired an outsourced IT Consulting firm, the goals and applications will be the same: Bolstering sound support from beginning to end. It is especially ideal to work with the same IT team from the development phase and indefinitely as long as your company is growing in the Cloud.

Dedicated management

Your new platform in the Cloud will ease the pressures of many IT roles and maintenance issues, but only to a marginal degree at the outset. You can grow your resources and infrastructure to make things easier to manage as you move forward as well. But despite these benefits, you’ll never end up in the position where abandoning dedicated management is an option.

You should have someone in place in a designated leadership role governing the Cloud operations and the existing technological assets built into the firm’s architecture. That individual can play a consulting role and should be a comfortable decision-maker for the migration as well as changes down the road. They can help establish and maintain an audit trail, and dictate the governance of all things Cloud. This position is extremely critical and should be in place before the jump to the Cloud even gets off the ground.