Cloud migration strategy (CMS) is a company’s high-level plan to shift existing on-premises and co-located application workloads and their related data to the cloud. Prioritizing workloads for migration, determining the optimal migration plan for each particular workload, building a pilot, testing, and revising the strategy depending on the outcomes of the pilot are all critical components of a successful cloud migration strategy. Migration teams should be guided by a strategy plan, which may be rolled back as needed.
Why Use A Cloud Migration Strategy?
An on-premises to cloud migration plan helps identify and implement the quickest, lowest-cost, and slightest disruptive change. If you want to know which applications should be replaced or rewritten, which should stay on your computer, which should be moved to a cloud platform to run as-is or be supplemented with native cloud services, and which cloud is the best place for each application, HazenTech can help.
To achieve the intended business and technical goals, a company’s Cloud migration strategy should be customized to meet the organization’s specific demands. The TCO and ROI of a migration project must be understood, and this necessitates familiarity with the company’s business objectives and its application portfolio.
Advantages Of Implementing A Cloud Migration Plan
- Well-planned cloud migration can save both money and time. In other cases, migration can take months or even years if the source and target platforms are not identical. Automated migrations may be done without downtime if the infrastructure and processes are constant.
- Many businesses are migrating to the cloud as part of a broader modernization effort in their IT infrastructure. Cloud-native organizations that leverage micro-services and APIs naturally run current, containerized application workloads on many cloud providers. In addition, because cloud providers use the most up-to-date servers and storage, enterprises no longer need to prepare for technology renewal. Instead, they can focus on addressing business challenges without worrying about upgrading RAM or operating systems in a server.
- As a result of moving to public cloud providers, businesses can respond quickly to changes in demand regardless of seasonality, expansion, or other spikes in demand. The savings can be substantial because resources are only paid for when used.
- Security can also be improved by moving to the cloud. Most cloud providers indeed use a shared responsibility model, but a company’s on-premises infrastructure is often much larger than the cloud infrastructure. Most cloud service providers offer security analytics, block undesired traffic, and ensure that OS and security updates are deployed without requiring user organizations to take additional steps. As a result, cloud-based applications and data are always accessible, no matter what happens to the end user’s hardware.
- Cloud migrations dramatically improve accessibility. Employee productivity rises because workers may access business-critical applications and data from home, on the road, or even in the office, just as they had previously been able to. As a result, machine downtime no longer results in a loss of access, and business operations can carry on as usual with no interruption.
Challenges In Devising A Smooth Cloud Migration Strategy
Failures and delays on the way to the public cloud litter the landscape. Before attempting to move everything to the public cloud, organizations should have a clear idea of which workloads must be moved and why. Otherwise, they risk wasting time and money by moving everything at once. Infrastructure, operations, and development groups are frequently involved when moving to the cloud.
It’s essential to figure out the end goal and how long it will take to get there: whether it will be a hybrid cloud migration strategy, a multi-cloud migration strategy with several public cloud providers, both of those options, or neither. Every company should think about these three things when planning to move to the cloud.
- Security. A zero-trust strategy should be used whenever possible to safeguard workloads in the cloud, which offers a shared responsibility model.
- Management and Compliance . ‘s By area and sector, regulations can be vastly different. While cloud service providers can guarantee physically secure storage of an organization’s data, it is the cloud customer’s responsibility to ensure that regulatory standards for things like data retention and privacy are met.
- Cost Control. Deprovisioning unused accounts, workloads, and data is the responsibility of each company, as is making sure that applications don’t duplicate themselves, causing VM or container sprawl across the cloud.
Complete Process Of Cloud Migration
Evaluate the architecture and demands of each application before deciding on a migration strategy. Also, consider the available talents, budget, and time frame to accomplish the intended goals. To begin, teams must examine the existing state of each workload to determine its maturity level. This may necessitate a thorough investigation of every existing application in some cases.
There should be defined goals, appropriate timeframes for each activity, and a knowledge of potential risks if things go wrong throughout the migration process so that the process may be appropriately planned and executed. The organization should focus on the following three areas of optimization:
- Optimize performance by customizing programs and scenarios
- Do not lose sight of the importance of daily operations and corporate governance.
- Build the necessary knowledge to form a team that will oversee the migration and procedures of the managed services team.
CONCLUSION
To summarise, a good cloud migration strategy will entail prioritizing workloads, establishing which workloads should be migrated first, developing an appropriate migration plan for each particular workload, testing the system, and making adjustments depending on the outcomes of this testing.
Creating a strategy document for cloud migration will help lead teams and allow for any necessary rollbacks. Migrating from one platform to another will be much easier if you take HazenTech’s assistance in ensuring that both the source and destination platforms have similar architecture. HazenTech provides a smooth migration of on-premises applications to the required cloud architecture, with no disruption to application availability or day-to-day operations.
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