Cloud migration is beneficial for modern organizations embracing digitization as it offers better scalability, productivity, flexibility, and performance compared to traditional systems.
With advancements in modern cloud services, more and more organizations are gradually shifting their workload, application, and service to the cloud.
According to Gartner research, companies will spend over 45% of their IT spending on cloud solutions rather than traditional IT by 2024.
It has become inevitable for modern companies to migrate to the cloud. By leveraging the capabilities of cloud computing, companies can drive their growth and meet modern demands.
However, migrating the infrastructure to the cloud is a challenging task.
You will need a robust and effective cloud migration strategy that will help you to move your on-premises workload, applications, and data to a cloud infrastructure.
With the right cloud migration strategy, you will not only successfully migrate your organizational assets to the cloud but will also reap the maximum benefits.
In this guide, I will talk about cloud migration and its strategies so that you will get an in-depth idea about it before you opt for cloud migration.
What Is Cloud Migration?
Cloud migration is the process of shifting an organization’s application, data, services, databases, IT resources, and other business elements to a cloud computing environment. The migration can either be done partially or wholly, depending upon the requirement of the organization.
Organizations mostly opt for cloud migration due to the outdated legacy infrastructure that isn’t able to cope with modern digital transformation. Outdated software solutions and servers and unreliable security policies are the main factors hindering growth.
While migrating to the cloud, an organization can take different approaches to ensure a smooth migration. Here are some of them:
- Public cloud: The most common cloud migration type opted for by many organizations is to shift applications, data, and services from on-premises data centers to a public cloud environment like AWS, Azure, and GCP.
- Cloud-to-cloud migration: It also serves as a popular choice among organizations where the cloud workloads are shifted from one cloud platform to another.
- Reverse cloud migration: Some organizations might also go for reverse cloud migration or cloud exit. In this type of cloud migration, the application and data are offloaded from the cloud to an on-premises server.
Since cloud data migration is a critical aspect, if you can execute the right cloud migration strategy, you can achieve the performance and efficiency you desire. It requires proper preparation, planning, analysis, and execution to ensure a successful migration.
Benefits of Migrating Data to the Cloud
Migrating your organization’s data, applications, and services to the cloud will treat you with many benefits:
- High performance: The cloud environment helps improve the performance of applications and websites hosted on the cloud using the latest technologies and tools. These services can run in any geographical location and can perform better with complete backup.
- Improved scalability: Cloud infrastructure allows organizations to scale their applications and services easily with an ever-increasing customer base and database. It enables the organization to adapt to changing business needs and scale according to market demands.
- Great flexibility: The cloud infrastructure resources can be modified depending on the traffic that your applications or services generate. You must be able to scale up or scale down and get the help you need to enhance efficiency.
- Better productivity: With cloud providers handling all the complexities and demands of cloud infrastructure, it gives you time to focus on the work. With quick accessibility to modern tools and data, your employees can work with better productivity
- Digital experience: Cloud migration allows your employees, as well as customers, to get a whole new experience. Employees can get to work from anywhere using the Internet with ease. It also helps improve customer experience as you will have more time to address their needs.
- Security: Most cloud providers safeguard their customer cloud infrastructure with best-in-class security tools and policies that help reduce risks by a large margin. From regular security analysis and top vulnerability management to compliance with regulatory standards, it provides a safer environment.
Challenges of Cloud Migration
Although cloud migration offers many benefits, you still might face some challenges. Here are some major challenges and how you can overcome them.
- Poor strategy: To follow the latest trend or meet increasing demand, many organizations often start migrating to the cloud without having a proper strategy. It not only leads to a decrease in performance but also many issues. But robust cloud migration planning and understanding of the requirement of each application and service can help in efficient cloud migration.
- Legacy application: Some legacy applications won’t work optimally even if you move them to the cloud. The best way to solve the issue is to disintegrate the application or rebuild it to make it adaptable to the modern cloud environment.
- Vendor lock-in: Vendor lock-in is another primary challenge many businesses face. In this situation, a cloud provider’s service can’t be extended to another cloud platform. After using a cloud service, if you are not happy with the performance, then it gets difficult to switch to another as it is a costly and long process.
- Cost management: During migration, if you don’t set clear KPIs regarding where to spend or save, then it can lead to some unnecessary expenditures.
Moreover, the cost of services in a cloud environment changes according to usage. If you opt for new services, you will have to be careful where you spend the capital. Having a proper plan from the beginning of migration can help you save a lot of money and utilize them on other resources.
Cloud Migrations Processes
When it comes to cloud migration processes, there are many ways to go about it. It entirely depends upon your migration goal and the size of your infrastructure. However, most organizations follow a basic cloud migration process, as I’ve discussed below:
#1. Effective Planning
The first thing you need to do is plan your migration, and to do that; you will need a solid strategy to accomplish it. You will have to figure out why you want to migrate to the cloud, your goals, and the use case.
It is best to have complete detail about your on-premises infrastructure, including resources and dependencies of the systems. While planning, you should determine the server, performance, and security requirements that will help run the application at the optimal state. It is also instrumental to plan out the amount and type of training you will have to provide to your team.
#2. Choosing a Suitable Cloud Solution
Once you have everything planned out, it is time to choose the cloud provider. The top cloud providers in the industry are Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and many others.
Every cloud provider offers multi-cloud, private, public, and hybrid cloud environments. So, you will need to choose a suitable one that caters to your requirement and will help you scale up or down with your business.
#3. Migrating Services, Applications, and Data
Now, it is time to execute the migration process. You will need to move your services, apps, and data from on-premises data centers to the chosen cloud environment. You can commence the migration process through a private network, public network, or offline transfer.
- Offline transfer might be time-consuming and costly, but it offers the best security for cloud data migration.
- Cloud migration services upload all the data and applications to a secured device, and then they are shipped to a selected cloud provider.
Choose one among them based on your preference and work according to your plan in order to execute a smooth cloud migration process.
#4. Validation
The last thing in the migration process that you will have to perform is to validate whether everything has moved correctly and works according to your requirement. The application and services should work optimally with cloud resources. Once you validate everything, you can conclude that your cloud migration has been successful.
Cloud Migration Strategies
Along with the cloud migration process, you will also need an effective and right cloud database migration strategy to achieve successful migration. There are seven strategies that are coined as 7Rs by Garnet and many organizations.
- Refactor: Refactor is the strategy where you will have to rebuild the application from scratch and utilize the cloud-native features to ensure optimum performance and scalability. You will reuse the existing framework and source code but run it on the intended PaaS.
- Rehost: Rehost is one of the simplest migration strategies where you just have to choose an IaaS provider and migrate the application there without making changes. It is a lift-and-shift strategy that is utilized by companies that are not highly familiar with cloud computing and need cloud infrastructure.
- Revise: This strategy is also known as re-platforming, where you will rewrite the code base and then establish them on the cloud platform through refactoring or Rehosting. It is advantageous if you want to make some optimizations to reap the maximum benefit of cloud capabilities.
- Repurchase: Repurchasing is a strategy where you will replace the existing application with a new one using a SaaS model and cloud-native platform. However, you might lose code familiarity with this strategy.
- Relocate: Relocate is an advanced migration strategy that will allow you to shift the whole infrastructure to the cloud without needing new hardware or adjustment to the application. You just need to utilize VMware Cloud to opt for such a migration.
- Retire: In this strategy, you can discontinue the old application that you don’t need and utilize the already-built SaaS application present on the cloud.
- Revisit: It is a highly effective strategy where you can maintain the application in its original infrastructure. It is mainly an application for legacy applications that handle internal processes of your organization and doesn’t require migration.
How to Choose the Right Cloud Service
Choosing the right cloud migration service is one of the vital aspects of cloud migration, and here are factors that you need to consider:
- Security and compliance: First, you should ensure that the cloud service has robust security capabilities catering to your security requirement to safeguard your data and application. You also need to make sure that they comply with standards like ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR to eliminate compliance risks.
- Technology support: While considering a cloud service, you should choose the one that supports technologies that your organization utilizes. The service provider should be able to support the workload and functionalities you need for the smooth running of your application.
- Integration: Opt for a service provider that will offer an extensive suite of integration with other tools and services that your company utilizes. There should not be a lapse in the integration process so that all of your team can work properly.
- Infrastructure and scalability: Not all cloud services are capable of handling large infrastructure. While considering a provider, make sure they are capable of accommodating your infrastructure and handling all the data and traffic you generate.
- Cost: You should consider the overall cost of getting the service and ensure the cloud service provides all the services at a reasonable price point. The total cost of ownership should be an important factor for consideration of the cost of support, resources, and other services.
Types of Cloud Services
There are four types of cloud services that an organization usually provides, and you can choose one of them according to your requirements:
- Infrastructure as a Service: IaaS is a popular cloud service where a service provider provides all the necessary cloud infrastructure you need. Virtual machines, server space, storage, operating system, and network are the main components of infrastructure that you can access using the network.
- Software as a Service: SaaS is a popular cloud service model where the service provides a web-based platform to you so that you can host your software application. All the necessary resources are provided for the smooth running of the application.
- Platform as a Service: In the PaaS cloud service model, the organization is provided with an infrastructure where the software developers can build, test and deploy the application at scale.
- Functions as a Service: FaaS is a cloud service model which allows developers to implement and run various pieces of code and functions in the cloud platform to perform a particular event or in response to triggers.
Limitation of Cloud Migration Strategy
Here are some limitations you might encounter even though cloud migration strategies ease the migration process:
- Time-consuming: Some of the cloud migration strategies are highly time-consuming and will take a lot of time to complete. The refactoring approach is the most time-consuming among the lot.
- Performance and latency issue: When migrating on-premises applications, you might face performance and latency issues because they are not built to work seamlessly on the cloud.
- Downtime: For most of the migration strategies, you will have to keep the in-house server offline, which may disrupt the business. Without proper backup and resource allocation, it can be dangerous to opt for migration strategies.
- Migration failure: If you don’t map your application requirement with that of the infrastructure and resources of the service provider, then the whole migration will fail. It might not only cause a disastrous effect on your business but will also create a lot of mess.
Conclusion
Cloud migration has become a necessity for modern businesses to grow and have an edge over their competitors. Nowadays, every organization is moving its workload and application to the cloud to achieve higher performance, flexibility, scalability, and other benefits.
I hope this article helps you get some idea about cloud migration, how beneficial this step is for modern businesses, and how implementing the right strategy can smoothen the cloud migration process.
You may also explore Cloud Data Protection.
