Guide to choosing a cloud architecture
Moving your systems to the cloud is not just changing servers: it means deciding how they are protected, backed up and scaled. This guide helps you plan a cloud architecture for businesses in Peru and Latin America, from assessment to operations.
When should you move from hosting to a cloud architecture?
Hosting is usually enough for a website or a simple site. It is worth thinking about a cloud architecture when your organization depends on several critical systems, such as an ERP, a CRM or a training platform, that must be available, backed up and connected to each other.
Other signs are systems that slow down at peak hours, an office server without tested backups or infrastructure costs that keep growing without anyone knowing exactly why. In those cases, designing the architecture carefully avoids improvising when an incident happens.
How do you choose between AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and DigitalOcean?
There is no single provider that is best for every case. The choice depends on the systems you will host, the tools your organization already uses, security and compliance requirements, the region where the data must reside and the budget you can sustain month after month.
For example, a company that already works with Microsoft tools may integrate more easily with Azure, while a project with few servers can be solved simply on DigitalOcean. What matters is comparing the total cost of operation, not just that of a server, and including backup, monitoring and support in the calculation.
What should you prepare before migrating your systems to the cloud?
Make an inventory of the applications, databases and services you use, with their owner and their importance to operations. Identify which systems depend on others, how long each one can be down and which data is sensitive.
It also helps to gather access to domains, servers and current providers, and to agree on the time windows when the final cutover can take place. With that information, the migration is planned in phases and each system is tested before it is moved. We recommend that the cloud provider account be in your company's name from the start.
What good practices keep the cloud secure and costs under control?
Apply the principle of least privilege: each person and each system should have only the access it needs. Use private networks for databases, encryption for sensitive information and automatic backups that are tested periodically, not just generated.
For costs, size resources to actual usage, shut down environments that are not in use and review consumption with alerts. Finally, measure what matters: system availability, response time at peak hours and the ability to recover data after a failure. As your custom software grows, the architecture should grow with it.
