Cloud Migration Benefits: Why Switching Network Management to the Cloud Makes Sense

Migrating your network infrastructure and management tools to the cloud offers tremendous advantages for modern businesses. As legacy on-premise data centers face growing limitations, shifting critical IT resources into robust cloud platforms provides the agility, efficiency, and innovation needed to stay competitive. 

This article explores the many benefits of cloud migration, including the financial, operational, and strategic upsides. We’ll also outline best practices you should implement to leverage the cloud’s potential and spotlight potential migration risks and how to mitigate them.

What is cloud migration?

Cloud migration refers to the strategic transitioning of digital assets like data, applications, databases, and IT infrastructure from on-premise data centers to cloud computing environments. Rather than relying solely on physical servers and hardware within company facilities, you shift those resources to leverage the on-demand scalability and flexibility of public, private, or hybrid cloud platforms.

Why migrate to the cloud?

The cloud’s potential to transform network management is vast, and there are many compelling business reasons to migrate your network to the cloud. If you’re just starting to compare on-prem vs. cloud-based network management, here are a few high-level benefits to get you started: 

• Reduced upfront capital expenditures associated with on-premise IT infrastructure 
• Reduced ongoing management and maintenance costs
• Superior scalability, business continuity, and data security 
• Accelerated innovation through rapid deployment of new technologies
• Enhanced collaboration, particularly for remote workforce needs 
• Realignment of internal teams’ priorities on core business goals rather than IT management 

 In essence, by making the switch from on-premesis to cloud-based network management, your team and business can tap into next-generation tools and technologies while unlocking major competitive advantages. 

12 benefits of cloud migration

The decision to shift network management capabilities to the cloud should be made strategically, as it has implications for businesses beyond how your IT team or MSP operates. However, for many teams, there is a very strong argument for transitioning to cloud-based infrastructure monitoring and control, as it can unlock significant advantages, including the following:

1. Whether you’re an IT team or an MSP, cloud-based network management can save the business you work with money 

One of the top financial benefits of cloud migration is that the cloud’s operating expenditure model eliminates costly hardware investments and data center management expenses. Rather than massive upfront capital outlays for servers and network gear, with cloud-based network management tools like Auvik, you can instead pay affordable, predictable monthly fees based precisely on the network monitoring resources you utilize.

In other words, you no longer have to guess at capacity requirements and overbuy hardware that gathers dust. And without large power-hungry server rooms full of hardware that you need to maintain, operate, and cool, significant cost savings are possible.

2. Cloud-based network management invariably simplifies IT management

Patching vulnerabilities across thousands of devices, tracking license renewals, and keeping firmware up to date require tremendous effort. When maintenance, upgrades, and monitoring of network infrastructure are handled by the cloud provider, your internal IT teams are freed from these mundane tasks.

Cloud platforms shoulder this administrative burden through the automated management of the underlying infrastructure. With robust APIs, cloud network management solutions also streamline integration with your existing IT service stacks.

For IT teams and MSPs, all of this means that your personnel have more time and space to focus on more strategic initiatives that create real business value, trading routine upkeep for innovation and growth. 

3. Cloud-based network management makes it easy to scale your monitoring capabilities

Cloud-based network management solutions easily scale compute and storage capacity to accommodate your business growth, M&A activities, and seasonal traffic fluctuations. You can incrementally grow network visibility resources to match demand via self-service.

The headaches and weeks-long procurement cycles of buying and deploying new hardware whenever your infrastructure caps are reached are a thing of the past. Cloud network monitoring tools provide an elastic framework tailored to the needs of your modern digital business, rather than traditional static networks.

For MSPs managing multiple client networks, the scalability of the cloud is especially valuable. As you add new customers, you can instantly provision additional monitoring capabilities as needed, without any upfront hardware costs or deployment delays.

Plus, with Auvik’s transparent per-device pricing model, you can accurately track utilization and ensure costs remain aligned with client value. This predictable OpEx approach also makes it straightforward to pass along infrastructure monitoring expenses to customers.

4. Cloud-based network management reduces technical debt

Cloud-based network management eliminates the accumulation of outdated systems, legacy software, and obsolete hardware that can burden an IT department with technical debt. Rather than being trapped in endless cycles of maintaining aging platforms and postponing critical updates, cloud-based network management allows you to gain continuously modernized capabilities—automatically and (with Auvik) at no additional cost.

This shift from perpetual technical debt to evergreen management platforms frees your capital and resources from maintaining the past to investing in the future. With automatic updates and new capabilities seamlessly integrated by cloud-based network management solutions like Auvik, the architectural limitations and security vulnerabilities associated with legacy tools become problems of the past. 

5. Cloud-based network management enhances business continuity

Your vital network data, including configs, traffic analytics, and logs, is stored redundantly across multiple geographic regions by cloud providers, eliminating single points of failure. Modern cloud networking ensures that if one region experiences technical issues or a natural disaster, your global network oversight continues uninterrupted.

Disaster recovery is also simplified, with cloud-based backups enabling swift restoration of your network visibility and management during crisis scenarios. This safeguards your ongoing operations and helps you avoid costly outages.

6. Cloud-based network management provides better security

Cloud-based network management solutions deliver comprehensive security visibility and control that is difficult to match using on-premise tools, including automated discovery and classification of firewalls, security appliances, access points, and every IP-connected device across your network, ensuring that nothing goes unnoticed or unmanaged.

Cloud platforms also implement robust security protocols, such as mandatory two-factor authentication, single sign-on integration with existing identity providers, and role-based access control that gives you granular permissions over who can view or modify network segments. With comprehensive audit logs, you can verify who is connecting to and making changes within your infrastructure. Multi-vendor support ensures compatibility with hundreds of network security vendors, from industry leaders to emerging solutions.

These platforms enable centralized oversight with real-time asset inventory and configuration management capabilities, helping you visualize changes to your network’s security posture. With proactive monitoring through syslog collection and real-time alerts, you can detect misconfigurations and suspicious behavior before they become incidents. And with some security responsibilities shared by the cloud provider, your network teams can focus more on leveraging these insights rather than maintaining the underlying security infrastructure. 

7. Cloud-based network management offers global accessibility

With your network data and management platforms residing in the cloud, your authorized users can securely access real-time infrastructure insights and control critical systems from anywhere in the world via desktops or mobile devices.

By untethering your network management capabilities from on-premise servers, your personnel gain greater flexibility to monitor infrastructure health, troubleshoot issues, and make configuration changes regardless of time zone or geographic location. Cloud-based network management liberates your IT teams from only being able to control systems from local consoles inside corporate data centers.

8. Cloud-based network management delivers multi-cloud and hybrid support

Cloud-based network management platforms deliver unified visibility and control across your diverse IT environments, from traditional on-premise infrastructure to multiple public and private clouds. This comprehensive oversight eliminates the silos that typically hamper your operational efficiency when managing heterogeneous networks. 

With native multi-cloud capabilities, your IT teams gain a single pane of glass for monitoring performance, security, and configuration across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and on-premise systems simultaneously. This integrated approach means you no longer need to toggle between different tools and interfaces when troubleshooting complex issues that span multiple environments.

9. Cloud-based network management increases agility

Cloud network management platforms like Auvik automatically implement feature updates, new tools, and innovations to address your emerging operational needs without requiring any manual intervention from your team. The on-demand nature of the cloud means these updates deploy instantly across your environment at no additional cost, eliminating the days or weeks of planning typically required with on-premise solutions. 

This automated approach empowers your IT teams with continuously upgraded management tools, security enhancements, and monitoring capabilities in response to your changing operational requirements. Whether it’s patching a new security vulnerability or delivering advanced analytics modules, Auvik’s cloud platform automatically keeps your network management capabilities current without requiring additional purchases or complex upgrade projects. 

10. Cloud-based network management enables collaborative workflows

Cloud-based network management enables your distributed IT teams to work together seamlessly with shared visibility into infrastructure performance, issues, and resolutions. Auvik’s comprehensive API ecosystem, including Network Management and SaaS Management APIs, transforms your traditional siloed approaches into cohesive team-based problem-solving across geographic boundaries.

These platforms leverage Auvik’s integration capabilities with tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, ServiceNow, and PagerDuty to create integrated communication channels, shared dashboards, and collaborative troubleshooting spaces that maintain detailed histories of your network incidents and their resolutions. When critical issues arise, your team members can simultaneously view the same real-time data, annotate findings, and coordinate response efforts regardless of their physical location. This dramatically reduces your mean time to resolution while creating a self-documenting knowledge base that preserves your institutional expertise.

11. Cloud-based network management provides insightful analytics

Cloud-based network analytics leverage elastic big data pipelines and machine learning algorithms to empower smarter optimization of your infrastructure capacity and traffic engineering.

By applying cloud-scale computational power, your network monitoring platforms gain expanded capabilities for analyzing interdependencies and patterns within massive amounts of performance data in ways not possible with on-premise tools. These cloud-native analytics unlock more insightful forecasting to better plan for your future bandwidth demands and infrastructure growth.

12. Cloud-based network management promotes environmental sustainability

By shifting your network management to shared cloud infrastructure, you significantly reduce the environmental impact of your IT operations. Cloud providers achieve economies of scale that enable far more efficient power usage and cooling than your individual corporate data centers could ever realize independently.

Modern cloud facilities, such as Amazon Web Services, where Auvik is hosted, use renewable energy sources, advanced thermal management, and optimized hardware utilization that minimize carbon emissions per compute unit. As sustainability becomes increasingly important to your stakeholders and regulatory bodies, cloud migration offers you a measurable way to demonstrate environmental responsibility while still maintaining robust network oversight capabilities.

Cloud migration risks and how to mitigate them

While migrating to the cloud unlocks game-changing advantages, your transition can be hindered by unanticipated pitfalls, such as the following:

Integration complexities

Connecting your legacy on-premise network monitoring tools and management platforms with new cloud-based systems can be complicated, especially when working with outdated hardware and software. You’ll often face integration challenges, a lack of compatibility, and configuration complexities.

How to proactively mitigate these risks: Thus, you should consider consulting expert network migration specialists to ensure that proper connections are established and that vital data flows correctly between your old and new systems.

Compliance considerations

Your cloud-based network management infrastructure must provide the necessary security controls, access limitations, activity logging, and data policies required to adhere to your industry-specific regulatory compliance standards. Suppose you’re in financial services, healthcare, government, or other highly regulated sectors. In that case, you have stringent requirements around data security, user auditing, encryption protocols, and jurisdictional data-handling policies that your cloud platforms must fully support. Even in these regulated industries, cloud-based solutions can be implemented successfully with the right compliance safeguards in place.

How to proactively mitigate these risks: Thus, consider conducting thorough compliance assessments with your team before migrating to identify specific regulatory requirements and make sure that your chosen cloud solution addresses them. You should map your compliance needs against provider capabilities and develop clear data governance policies tailored to your industry’s regulations.

Legacy application issues

Your critical network monitoring, management, and analytics applications are often tightly coupled to on-premise servers, databases, and legacy systems. These applications often require refactoring and cloud optimization before migration is viable. Forcing lift-and-shift transitions of your outdated software typically degrades performance, accuracy, and reliability. Your legacy apps, such as custom scripts in Nagios Core or PRTG Network Monitor, must be upgraded, containerized, or rebuilt using cloud-native development approaches to realize the benefits without compromising capability.

How to proactively mitigate these risks: Thus, you should consider performing an internal application inventory to identify and prioritize which legacy systems need to be modernized before you migrate. Then, you can develop a phased transition approach that addresses one application group at a time to minimize disruption to network operations.

For an in-depth example of how to migrate from an on-premises network management system to a cloud-based solution, please see our guide: How to Migrate from SolarWinds to Auvik without Downtime. 

How to leverage the benefits of cloud migration for your business

When migrating to cloud-based network monitoring and management platforms, there are critical steps that enhance your migration experience and operational outcomes. These strategic approaches empower your teams to fully harness the transformative capabilities these modern tools provide across your network infrastructure.

What to look for when evaluating cloud network management solutions

Your cloud network management platform selection process should focus on capabilities that deliver immediate visibility, automate routine tasks, and integrate seamlessly with your existing infrastructure to maximize ROI.

• Comprehensive multi-cloud visibility: Your ideal cloud management solution delivers complete visibility spanning your on-premises infrastructure and diverse cloud environments, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. This unified oversight eliminates the monitoring silos that traditionally fragment your network intelligence, enabling your team to maintain seamless control over increasingly complex hybrid deployments.
• Automated discovery and mapping: Prioritize cloud monitoring platforms that automatically discover and document all connected devices across your distributed infrastructure. These capabilities generate real-time topology maps that eliminate your need for manual asset tracking and documentation, freeing your personnel from time-consuming inventory management tasks.
• Custom alerting and monitoring: A cloud management platform should provide sophisticated customization of alerts and monitoring parameters personalized to your unique infrastructure requirements and traffic patterns. This precision enhances your visibility into performance degradations and security anomalies most relevant to your specific network environments.
• Choose a cloud-native network management platform: Purpose-built network management tools like Auvik provide you with full infrastructure visibility, multi-vendor support, and seamless integration with popular cloud stacks. Where legacy on-premise tools fail to deliver cloud visibility and system control, Auvik gives you the insight you need to maximize your network performance.
• Generous free trials: Your procurement process benefits from leveraging comprehensive free trials from leading cloud management vendors. These evaluation periods allow your team to thoroughly test capabilities using your actual network data before committing to licensing agreements, confirming platform suitability across your diverse environments.
• Quick and simple setup: Deployment timeline accelerates with cloud-based network management platforms that onboard rapidly without requiring extensive consulting engagements or complex on-premises software agents. Web-based access enables your teams to gain immediate infrastructure insights without lengthy implementation cycles.

Post-implementation best practices

Once your cloud-based network management platform is operational, implementing these optimization strategies ensures your team extracts maximum value from your investment while continuously enhancing operational efficiency.

• Refine alert rules: Operational efficiency improves as you continuously adjust and optimize your alerting parameters to minimize false positives while maintaining visibility into critical network events. This calibration process saves your teams valuable troubleshooting time and focuses their attention on genuinely important infrastructure issues.
• Review usage trends: Subscription costs remain aligned with your actual needs when you regularly analyze platform usage patterns to right-size your cloud instance. This ongoing assessment allows your organization to scale resources down during predictable lulls and expand capabilities when demand increases, perfectly matching your changing infrastructure requirements.
• Automate workflows: Management overhead decreases significantly when you leverage workflow automation capabilities to execute repetitive tasks like configuration backups, software updates, and device onboarding without manual intervention. These automations dramatically improve your operational efficiency while reducing human error rates.
• Expand integrations: Your IT ecosystem becomes increasingly cohesive as you methodically connect your cloud monitoring platform with complementary systems like ticketing tools and configuration management databases through available APIs. These integrations extend the value of your infrastructure data across all management stacks while eliminating duplicative workflows.

Auvik: Cloud migration made simple, with zero downtime 

As a leading cloud-based network management platform, Auvik streamlines infrastructure monitoring, troubleshooting, and analysis for IT teams. Purpose-built for the cloud era, Auvik offers unmatched visibility into hybrid network environments while leveraging the latest automation, machine learning, and analytics innovations.

Unlike complex on-premise solutions, Auvik’s intuitive cloud-based platform provides out-of-the-box visibility and proactive monitoring to optimize network efficiency. 

Experience Auvik’s network visibility firsthand with a free 14-day trial. Or book a customized demo to discuss your infrastructure management needs.