5 Cloud Migration Preparation Steps
A well-executed cloud migration may give your firm a future-proof foundation that optimizes your IT infrastructure’s performance, cost, and scalability. However, you risk having the opposite effect without a clear plan, particularly in migration and ongoing expenditures.
Here are five stages to successful cloud migration.
1. Select a Migration Manager.
The project manager should be one person. This candidate will head the Cloud Center of Excellence, which will internally be in charge of the migration.
This may appear a straightforward step, yet many firms start cloud migrations with too many decision-makers sharing the job.
Depending on the volume and sensitivity of the data, many stakeholders may be required to sign off on every particular activity, which might stymie the project.
Department heads can provide comments early on and then get rationales afterward.
If a lead manager is not designated immediately away, teams may perform without coordination, hampering the migration once it is begun. The longer you operate with a committee arrangement, the higher the expenditures and implications on bandwidth.
2. Map Out Your Account Structure
The second phase is to lay out account structure, security, and governance at a high level. You don’t want everything in one account but a governance strategy for all apps, workloads, resources, and users. You will need to establish explicit migration KPIs for this.
Some needs, like availability and latency, will be preset. It would help if you also considered end-user concerns and the intricacies of how the application or data will be used.
If you supply patient chart data to home healthcare practitioners, for example, they will require the following:
• High availability. Mobile healthcare providers moving between residences will want access to patient data whenever and wherever they are, as rapidly as feasible.
• Data protection and privacy. Because HIPAA/HITECH-protected healthcare data is involved, you must guarantee that access and storage are both secure.
You can’t go into a cloud migration thinking that the results would be better than on-premise hosting. That is virtually always doable, but only with sufficient preparation.
3. Determine the best type of migration.
You’ll then decide which path will assist you in getting there based on your requirements and KPIs. The first major decision is which of the “6 R’s” of cloud migration to pursue:
• Rehosting: Migrating your application and data in their current state (“lift and shift”).
• Replatforming: Redesigning some aspects to use cloud computing (“horizontal scaling”).
• Refactor: Completely redesign your application to be cloud-first.
• Retain: Keeping some aspects on-premises is appropriate for lengthier migrations or compliance.
• Retire: Deactivating unwanted functions (i.e., not moving them at all)
• Repurchase: Replacing some functionalities with a third-party cloud solution
Each method best suits a particular use case; don’t just go with “lift and shift” because it’s the quickest.
Software-as-a-service providers, for example, will need to prepare the transfer of DevOps processes, which may need to be adjusted to run on the cloud. Minimal design modifications may imply that all firms do not fully utilize the cloud, which may result in larger workloads and operational issues down the road.
4. Select a Cloud Provider
The fourth stage is to make a vital choice about whether public or private education is correct for you.
Public clouds will have reduced prices, infinite scalability, and no maintenance requirements. Because of their pooled resources and expertise in cloud infrastructure, you’re relying on a third-party provider to handle it, such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure.
Whether you develop the infrastructure or cooperate with a third party, private clouds will be exclusive to your firm. Depending on the importance of the data you’re dealing with, a private cloud may provide the most excellent customization and security protection.
There’s also hybrid cloud computing, which blends public and private cloud components.
5. Determine Your True Ownership Cost
Finally, your company must determine its actual cost of ownership or the total of all direct and indirect costs associated with migrating to and sustaining a cloud presence.
The actual expenses of transferring specific apps and infrastructure are the most critical concerns here. The greater these expenditures are likely to be, the more data and systems you migrate, or the more complex the process is (e.g., how much refactoring is required). Aside from the initial transfer, you must consider continuing license payments for your chosen solution.
However, additional considerations to consider here include team logistics. What impact will their skill sets have on the TCO? Will development teams be allowed to create their accounts? As a result, they might operate without guardrails, increasing TCO.
Prime Performance Requires Proper Planning
Cloud migrations are a massive task, but with proper preparation, they can be broken down into a straightforward step-by-step procedure. Whether you tackle it alone or seek a cloud migration partner, you should establish internal leadership as soon as possible and learn your requirements and means inside and out.
This can help you streamline your strategy and platform options, simplifying short-term migration and long-term cloud administration.
