Cloud migrations are huge undertakings for any organization. Faced with this overwhelming task, many organizations will choose to simply move their existing systems to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) environments – commonly known as the “Lift and Shift” strategy. While this approach checks the box for being in the cloud, it does little to address the systemic problems and pressures that steer people to choose the Lift and Shift strategy in the first place. Alternately, there are a number of Software as a Service (SaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS) options for achieving a modern, cloud-based application environment.
So, here’s the question - what can you do to address and overcome these systemic problems with your cloud migration?
To help you simplify your journey to the cloud, we have outlined 3 main considerations to help you ensure a successful cloud migration. Let’s dive into them, right away!
Nothing comes without risks. And cloud migration is no exception. So, you need to stay prepared as there possibilities of things going wrong or backfiring with cloud migration. However, this should not stop you from making a move towards the cloud. Because the benefits of moving to the cloud are numerous, and believe me - migration is worth it!
So, how do you ensure things don’t go wrong?
Answer: Invest in legitimate outside help
However, this does not mean you leave it to them entirely. It should be a collaborative effort. A noted Gartner analyst Lydia Leong points out how external experts "accelerate and improve cloud adoption" while also cautioning you against low-quality assistance. She even warns against organizations handing over strategic planning to outside parties entirely! In other words, before you get help - do your homework and research!. That is, identify experts who can retrain your teams, migrate representative apps that demonstrate a repeatable pattern, and establish best practices for code deployment.
It’s a fact! - you can't change all the workload/process as you migrate to the cloud. Also, it is humanly and technically impossible. In other words, some systems won't change at all, some may get slight modifications, and others may be entirely replaced or rewritten. The same goes for your business processes. To speed up your migration, you need to be conscious and make a tough decision about what stays the same, and what changes. It’s just like cleaning your home or when you have to shift to a new home - you are forced to decide what to take with you, what needs to be changed, and most importantly - what needs to be left behind!
No doubt, lift-and-shift sounds tempting because it’s easy to implement and feels safe and fast. But remember all that matters today is agility. Moving the existing virtual machines, hypervisors, commercial databases, first-generation configuration management systems, and middleware components will result in the same complicated deployments, high capital costs, and messy operations you're already dealing with. Therefore, it's smart to look for sensible replacements to swap in as you migrate, and be strategic about where you can gain leverage.
And most importantly, don't lift and shift most of your IT processes. Rethink your change review board, your annual budget process, and any seasonal deployment freezes that your enterprise may have. However, these would have made sense for capital-intensive on-premises systems that changed infrequently, but these may not work when you're shifting your focus to delivering nonstop customer value.
It’s important to bring in automation while migrating to the cloud. Infrastructure provisioning and application deployment is a good way to start. When your team can automatically provision environments for their applications, it will help them get their work done faster with greater efficiency. Also, don't make them guess about what it should look like, or wait weeks while a system administrator builds virtual machines for them. It’s important to lay down critical shared infrastructure like network connectivity between cloud and on-premises locations, and identity management systems.
To add on, every migrated system needs to be on a deployment "pipeline" - one that can deliver security updates and functional modifications through automation. Create an environment where your teams can assess the workload, decide a course of action, and follow a blueprint to build a pipeline to production. No doubt, this is going to be difficult but remember if you don’t give it a try then it's going to be extremely risky for your organization in the long run. It’s now or never!
Migrating applications to the cloud can bring significant benefits to a company but it’s not something you do without careful planning. It has to be approached strategically because one wrong decision will cost you in more ways than you care to calculate. We hope the above 3 key considerations will help you in your cloud migration (Back link the underlined words to the data integration section from the services page) journey!
Happy cloud migration to you!