Migrating Your Clients to an Alternative Cloud Provider Is Easier than You Might Think

Alternative cloud providers are becoming an increasingly popular choice for SMBs. These cloud providers–often built with open source technology–are capable of providing the scale and quality of infrastructure needed for most enterprise workloads.

Examples of alternative cloud providers include Linode, Digital Ocean and Vultr. These companies are excellent choices for SMBs because they focus on delivering the most in-demand infrastructure primitives–like Linux compute nodes, databases as a service, bare metal instances, load balancers and Kubernetes–without the more exotic services they don’t need. Alternative cloud providers also tend to be less expensive than the “big three”–AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform–especially at the scale most SMBs need.

Alternative cloud providers offer developers and SMBs a legitimate alternative: typically, the same or better performance at a much better price. So, once you and your client decide that an alternative cloud provider is the right choice, what’s next? Each provider is different, but here’s an example of how Linode approaches getting data and apps onto its cloud via three distinct migration options.

Option 1: The “DIY”

Plenty of people choose to figure out migrating their data on their own, and there are certainly resources available for those who decide to take this route. For the DIY’ers, Linode offers excellent customer service through its 24/7/365, no tiers, no bots, no hand-offs support. There is also tons of documentation available about migrating to Linode, including some best practices and how to migrate from Google Cloud Platform.

Option 2: Get Help from a Professional Services Team

If the first option sounds daunting, Linode and others offer cloud consultants who can help migrate workloads with minimal stress and downtime. They’ll handle everything from content transfer and DNS records to the cutover of your traffic. Although anyone can certainly spin up Linode in less than a minute on their own, working with a team of experienced consultants to provide guidance for architecture, migrations and software deployments makes things easier for users unfamiliar with certain add-ons. Also, qualifying projects are eligible for free infrastructure credits to make the transition to Linode at no additional cost.

Option 3: Make Use of a Partner Program

Lastly, many alternative cloud providers offer partner programs as a means to collaborate and make improvements alongside multiple teams of users. Linode’s partner program, in particular, offers technical and marketing resources such as:

• Partner-specific pricing to improve margins without sacrificing performance
• Solutions that include 100% human support your customers can rely on
• Scalability for your business on a platform with proven reliability
• No vendor lock-in
• A smarter alternative for your multi-cloud environment
• Design solutions with no pricing surprises
• Marketing support through content, events and advertising
• A dedicated partner success manager

Some of the managed hosting providers and development agencies that work with Linode include BitPusher, Cloudways, Pressidium, Stark & Wayne, Cloudnet, Jarvus, Savvii and Configr.

Each alternative cloud provider has similar options for migrating workloads, and many users find that one of the three options works great for them. When making a move to an alternative cloud provider, make sure it has the infrastructure primitives you and your clients need, and that it can support all types of migrations.

Jon Hill is Vice President, Revenue Operations, at Linode. You can reach him at [email protected] or (844) 869-6072.

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