Migration to cloud is a long step-by-step journey and it is transformational in its nature, as it affects the strategical capabilities of a company or organization. It refers to the process of moving an organization’s IT resources, including applications, data, and infrastructure, from on-premises or local data centers to cloud-based services. The primary goal of this migration is to take advantage of the scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of cloud computing.

We at Authority Partners have a well thought-out process that makes the migration process streamlined and more predictable, with a clear migration plan that allows for better risk management.

BUSINESS DRIVERS

From our experience doing many cloud migrations in the past years, in most of the cases the scalability and cost control appeared to be the main drivers behind the decisions to migrate to the cloud, but there are other benefits as well. Here are the most compelling ones:

• Scalability: The cloud removes physical and financial constraints to scalability and allows us to scale up your resources automatically, depending on usage and utilization. Cloud computing also offers the ability to scale resources up or down based on demand, which enables businesses to quickly respond to changes in their operations, such as seasonal peaks or unexpected growth.
• Agility: The cloud allows us to quickly respond and adapt to the changes in the business environment. It enables us to move from an idea to implementation in hours rather than weeks or even the months it can take to provision on-premises resources, increasing productivity by letting us focus on things that matter to the business.
• Reliability and Availability: Most cloud providers have SLAs that guarantee 99.9% availability, as well as built-in backup and recovery capabilities. The cloud also makes it easy to build fault-tolerance into the systems. It is possible to easily add extra resources (potentially located in a different region) to kick in automatically when the primary resources fail, keeping the services operational and available.
• Cost Optimization: Migrating to the cloud allows us to take advantage of a variable cost model, compared to the fixed cost model of a private, on-premises, infrastructure. Instead of a capital investment in hardware and software to anticipate scalability the company may or may not need, we pay only for the resources and capacity that are needed.
• Security: Public clouds provide built-in security at the platform level. Cloud providers regularly upgrade their infrastructure and services, following the latest industry standards and best practices while staying compliant with government and industry regulations. There is a range of existing tools and features in the cloud that help protect data from various cyber threats.
• Advanced Technology: Cloud providers offer access to the latest and most advanced technology, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, which may be too expensive or complex for organizations to implement on their own.

OUR APPROACH

There are five important challenges when it comes to cloud migration, and they can be summarized as:

• Migrating large databases – Moving a database is difficult, especially if there are large amounts of data involved. Data migration often takes considerable time.
• Data integrity and security – When data is moved from an on-premises environment into the cloud, it needs to maintain its integrity after arriving at its destination. Moreover, it must not leak or be intercepted along the way.
• Business Continuity – Business-critical systems need to remain available during cloud migrations to avoid having the benefits of the cloud upgrade canceled out by costly downtime. Creating redundancy and moving assets one by one, instead of all at once, is a typical approach for ensuring that cloud migrations don’t jeopardize business continuity.
• Cost overruns – If workloads are moved to the cloud without proper planning, they can cause sticker shock.
• Interoperability and portability – As multi-cloud environments become more common, organizations should ensure that it is feasible to move the workloads they plan to move.

Due to all these and many other challenges, we have devised a unique approach that provides a unified approach to cloud migration. Our approach to cloud migration can be explained using the figure below:

As can be seen from the diagram above, it consists of four distinct phases, going from left to right:

1. Discover and Assess: This phase is about identifying the current state of technology by engaging our team of experts who have a deep understanding of the existing infrastructure, environment, applications, databases, security concerns, and more.
2. Migration Plan: After understanding the current state, we embark on creating a detailed migrations plan that provides an optimal approach depending on the assessed current state. This plan can then also be used to estimate the time and costs of the migration, so the company for which the migration is being done can make an educated decision on how to proceed based on the actual hard figures.
3. Migrate and Validate: In this phase, the actual migration is executed, with testing and measuring performance of the execution.
4. Operate and Optimize: This is the last phase, which marks the end of the migration and transitions into an ongoing repetitive process.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT STRATEGY

Choosing the right cloud migration strategy depends on several factors, including the nature of the applications and data being migrated, the level of control required, the urgency of the migration, and the budget and resources that are available.

Here are some considerations that can help in selecting the right cloud migration strategy:

• What are the applications and data that need to be migrated?
• What is the compatibility level with the cloud environment that will be used as a migration target?
• What is the timeline for the migration, i.e., what are the business deadlines that need to be reached, can it be a phased approach, what is the priority list of applications, services and business functionality in general?
• What is the required level of control? This helps determine if the public cloud is the way to go, or private cloud, or some hybrid approach. The advantages and disadvantages of each cloud flavor should be considered before making the final decision.
• What is the evaluation of the budget and resources? If the budget is limited, a lift-and-shift approach may be more cost-effective. However, if the budget allows, a more complex strategy may be appropriate.

An important aspect to consider is how to migrate the actual applications and services; the point being that it can be done in at least three distinct ways:

1. Lift and Shift: This approach means just moving the exact copy of an application or service to a cloud environment, without any modification at application, database or OS layer.

2. Technical Migration: This approach is a variation of the lift-and-shift approach, where the same is done just with additional improvements over increasing the performance of the application or service, improving the security using the existing features and tools in the cloud, improving the failover and backup capabilities, and more.

3. Application Migration: In this approach, the application is modified itself, as well as the OS and DB layer. The level of the modification can vary, and it can go all the way up to a considerable re-architecting of the application/service. The process may involve extensive changes to the way the landscape is running and managed as well as the landscape itself. The new, upgraded system will have greater automation and require different competencies than the on-premises legacy system. That may warrant a change to a managed services model, and a new approach to management emphasizing proactive planning. Properly handled, that means more consistent performance, lower cost and less downtime in the future.

After we are clear on all of the questions and challenges outlined above, our approach can be presented more concisely in the following flow chart:

CONCLUSION

Cloud migration is a challenging endeavor and something that needs to be well figured out and carefully planned, as it involves a considerable effort and usage of time, resources and budget.

The approach that we employ at Authority Partners can help create a clear plan on how to execute in this respect and provide much more clarity and control over the whole process.

Authority Partners is a US-based international IT consultancy and service provider. With offices around the world, we are able to offer expert solutions and a level of technological excellence that sets us apart from the competition. To our clients we are partners who deliver business outcomes.

We are Authority Partners. 

To learn more about how we can help your business migrate to the cloud, please reach out to us here or via email at hello@authoritypartners.com.