The cost, performance, and security benefits of on-premise to cloud migration have been tirelessly documented, but what’s less often talked about is how to effectively migrate your environment.
Migrating from on-premise to cloud infrastructure is not as simple as shutting off your in-house systems and signing up with some cloud service providers during your morning coffee break. Migration is a process that requires due diligence, planning, foresight, and a careful, step-by-step strategy.
First, let’s look at the three most common approaches to cloud migration:
- Lift and shift: This is when you move your existing assets to the cloud to keep your business operations the same while reducing costs, boosting performance, and enhancing security.
- Improve and move: A more involved cloud migration strategy focused on re-architecting assets before moving them to the cloud to gain access to more of the features and benefits.
- Hybrid cloud migration: Keep some of your IT in-house while moving other parts to the cloud. This can work well for organizations with large, complex on-premise footprints or legal requirements.
Whichever path you take, following these steps is a tried-and-tested journey to a successful migration. Additionally, you can follow a cloud migration checklist. If you are ready we can get started with cloud migration.
Step 1: Select Your Migration Architect
You will need to determine who is going to lead your organization in the move to the cloud; whether it’s someone already on the team who is adequately skilled or a new face. The migration architect is tasked with planning each detail of the migration, defining success, and prioritizing the key steps.
They will need to be someone who works well with cloud providers, understands the ins and outs of business operations and technology, and knows how to lead an organization through major change.
Step 2: Define Your Cloud Environments
Like on-premise environments, cloud setups come in many different shapes and sizes. You’ll need to figure out whether to:
- Go with a single cloud provider to keep things simple but risk vendor lock-in
- Take advantage of applications from numerous providers but risk your environment becoming complex to manage.
This is an oversimplification of the options available, so be sure to consider all the approaches your organization can take and what all different cloud providers offer.
Step 3: Set ROI and Performance Expectations for Your On-Premise to Cloud Migration Project
Moving to cloud computing is about making tangible improvements to your business by reducing ongoing costs, improving performance, and mitigating risk. Where’s the fun in doing that if it can’t be measured?
Before charging ahead with your cloud migration, understand the ROI you can expect from your initial investment. That way, you can more easily work towards ambitious goals and make sure you are squeezing the maximum value out of your cloud migration.
Step 4: Decide Your Migration Steps
Migrating to the cloud doesn’t happen all at once. You need to determine the order in which you’ll complete the migration, which will depend on a number of factors such as the most urgent business priorities, the complexity of the migration, and the impact on your operations.
Clearly map out your steps in a document that you and your IT team can refer back to throughout the migration.
Step 5: Complete Application Refactoring for On-Premise to Cloud Migration
Refactoring your applications and services is a powerful way to make them work as well as possible in the cloud (and on virtual machines). If this step is part of your migration plan, now is the time to begin the refactoring process.
Once it’s done, your organization will be ready for dynamic scaling, dynamic resource allocation, and much more.
Step 6: Carefully Move Your Data to the Cloud
Migrating data is one of the most nuanced steps in cloud migration, and it can be made harder if there are challenges presented by the likes of data location and access methods.
Start by creating a copy of your data in a cloud data warehouse, and then get on with setting up the ongoing replication function. There are a number of migration tools that can automate the data transfer process, reducing errors.
Check common cloud migration problems and challenges.
Step 7: Move Over Production
Next comes the exciting step of switching over the production system from on-premises to the cloud. You might choose to do this all in one go if you’re confident that everything is set up and working correctly. Or you might choose to do it in incremental steps, just to make sure nothing too big goes wrong.
Step 8: Monitor Your New Cloud Environment
Once your migration from on-premise to cloud is complete, it’s tempting to think the job is done. But there’s ongoing work to do in managing resource optimization, monitoring cloud usage, and more. It will be much less work than your on-premise environment, but it’s just as important to keep on top of your new cloud systems.
Successfully Migrate from On-Premise to Cloud
At Accudata Systems, a Converge Company, we help businesses migrate to, monitor, and manage cloud services. You’ll work with an expert team that:
- Works with leading cloud providers such as AWS and Microsoft Azure
- Develops web and mobile applications in the cloud
- Protects your valuable data assets.
And we don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach either. We understand your business needs to recommend cloud-based solutions and migration strategies that fit your needs.
Find out why 92% of our clients choose to work with us again. Discuss your cloud migration needs with us today.