Cloud migration is a reflection on the minds of many industry leaders. Whilst on-site solutions were the ultimate choice only a few years ago for most companies, the landscape changed rapidly.
Cloud technology enables companies to bypass the on-site utilization and maintenance of costly IT infrastructure while offering flexibility, speed and business safety options. As the industry standard becomes, corporate leaders and IT companies are now facing a Shakespearean question: whether or not to move to the cloud? And if so, how?
Companies have first and foremost to determine the correct reasons for this transition and to analyses whether they are applicable. Then, the time to jump in and migrate legacy systems and applications has to be determined. And naturally, one important consideration is how migration can be achieved without causing havoc.
The following sections contain a checklist for companies wishing to prepare a sound strategy on cloud migration. You can ensure that the cloud passes smoothly – for your team and for your customers – by using these guidelines.
The checklist of motivation and development
There are some important points you need to address internally before you can answer “to be or not to be” for the cloud migration of your company.
How is cloud migration motivated and reasoned? First you should look closely at why your company migrates to the cloud. The right motivation is, like any effort, essential to achieving the best results.
The typical motivation for companies to migrate to the cloud is:
1. Keep up with the competition
It may feel like you are lagging when most of your competitors are on the cloud. The cloud’s ability to grow permanently enables organizations, which opens the door to the development of new business patterns, is one of its main advantages.
2. Meet customer requirements
Your customers may also have demands, depending on your industry, such as availability of cloud-supplied services, plus granular and flexible pricing plans. Cloud technologies also provide a clearer picture of customer usage, allowing leadership to focus on their competitiveness and to make their value proposition more efficient.
3. Ensure mobility for businesses
Remote Work is no longer restricted to internet companies. The consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic are becoming clear, as companies that can work online with distributed teams are the ones that survive the crisis the best. Moving to the cloud allows your company to operate remotely, whether due to company policy or external constraints.
4. To overcome hardware problems
All running on site has a high price tag, and it is costly and complicated in several ways. The hardware is ageing and must be regularly replaced. Continuous buying of more stock requires increased traffic and activity. The operational requirements for multi-region infrastructure also place a heavy financial burden.
5. Out-of-date infrastructure problems
To ensure continuous service, your servers need regular updates. Sometimes outdated software problems are hard to resolve.
6. Management of total costs
To ensure continuous service, your servers need regular updates. Sometimes outdated software problems are hard to resolve.
It is a good idea to list the reasons for your business in detail. You can then evaluate whether there are plenty of checkbox ticks to justify a major change, such as cloud migration.
What will we win?
The advantages you can gain from Cloud migration can be described.
The most frequent advantages companies seek are:
- Reduction of hardware and software IT-related costs to support local solutions
- Enhanced accessibility from everywhere and at any time for your team to the company systems to fully remote operations
- On-demand scalable infrastructure capabilities for more appliances
- Less trouble with complex facilities
- Agility in development and faster marketing
- Enhance your customers’ flexibility and service speed
With this as a starting point, you can put the advantages your company is looking for on paper. Then the cloud migration reasons you included in the last section can be juxtaposed and assessed.
What are we supposed to take care of?
Your analysis should also address possible problems with moving to the cloud. It is important to preview obstacles that can arise before you can start any migration operation.
A list of the usual concerns is provided here:
- Does there exist interdependence between systems or applications which could impede the migration of one or more elements?
- Is it necessary to update or otherwise modernize applications or systems before transferring them to the cloud?
- Is there any integration into on-site technology that may divide your customer or team’s user journey?
- Do any industry regulations that do not permit sensitive data to be stored in the cloud have to be respected?
Who is capable of performing the migration?
Last but not least, an internal expert audit should be carried out. It is important to find out if you have the necessary team experts who can actually successfully perform the migration. A business analyst, project manager, infrastructure expert, security expert and possibly an architect for larger and more difficult migrations are on the list of professionals who should participate in the process.
If you have no internally competent skills, you can opt for working with an external advisor who can analyses and perform the cloud migration with you. You may still decide to use a third-party help even if there are specialists within your staff. The time of your staff that should be redirected to cloud movement as well as cost evaluations are considerations for this. External assistance is available in different ways. This can take the form of advice, actual implementation and full planning and migration without the planning process.
The checklist for cloud migration
Once the preliminary checklist has been completed and you are able to conclude that your business is going to benefit from cloud migration, it is high time to plan the real process. How will you perform the move?
1. Map your current infrastructure
The first step in this checklist is to identify the current appearance of your on-site environment. You should map your servers, workloads and usage metrics, as well as storage. It is essential to detect all the interrelationships between systems and applications. Make sure that the impact of the move is also assessed on aspects such as data management, safety rules and plans to recover disasters.
2. Perform a gap assessment
You can also inform your analysis of the gap on the basis of mapping. It is necessary for each application to decide what will happen. Some are retained; others must be hosting, refactoring, re-plat forming or re-architecting. It also provides an overview of non-functional aspects, such as safety issues, resilience, storage, maintenance and operating costs.
3. Select the cloud type and the right cloud supplier
You have to select the cloud model and type that best meets the requirements and security of your company. IaaS, PaaS and DraaS are the cloud platform types. The four types available are public, private, hybrid and multi cloud, generally a mix of some public IaaS cloud environments.
Then a cloud vendor must be selected. This is in itself a complex decision, because a number of considerations must be combined. In evaluating public vendors, you have to take into consideration typical criteria such as safety, compliance, support and pricing. You must analyses factors such as location, reliability, integration and the complexity of the technology for private cloud suppliers.
4. Estimate migration costs
You can also make a full estimate of the cost of cloud migration when choosing the supplier you would like to work with. You must take into account that some applications may be more expensive to run on the cloud, while the opposite is the case for many. Don’t forget to take the initial investment and total ownership costs into account.
5. Lay your roadmap for migration
As a last step, a roadmap for migration should be developed. It will contain all the details of the measures you will have to take from your preliminary analysis and step by step. The road map would also set the time frame for various migration phases, which should be planted with a complete overview of corporate considerations.
Ready to begin the migration journey of your cloud?
It is not an easy process to move your legacy cloud systems and apps. But working with an experienced software advisor can help you make the right choices and make the right time to avoid putting the cart in front of the horse. Working with such a partner enables you to perform the most appropriate assessment of cloud readiness before pressing the start button.
The cloud readiness assessment packages from VAPORVM can be started. This evaluation gives you an overview of requirements and a roadmap for successful and economic cloud migration.
Ready to go, Contact us to learn how we can be of assistance.
