Cloud Migration Strategy – 6 Key Elements of a Successful Cloud Migration

If you want to succeed in today’s digital world, then you need to embrace the power of cloud computing. Almost every organization is moving its data and applications to the cloud. According to a report from Gartner, the public cloud services market is $305 billion in 2021. More than 45% of the IT budget will consist of cloud solutions by 2024.

Most companies are spending on cloud technology. However, still they don’t understand the main benefits of the cloud. More than 33% of organizations have seen no improvement in IT effectiveness after moving to the cloud. Cloud migration is both a costly and complex affair. Thus, you should ensure that you are doing everything to avoid cloud project failure.

The main solution to this problem lies in proper planning. You need to select the correct cloud migration approach for your business. In this article, we are going to talk about the 6 key elements of successful cloud migration. This guide will help you in creating a cloud migration strategy.

What is Cloud migration?

Most organizations think that cloud migration is all about moving to the cloud. However, cloud migration is an iterative process. You need to do it regularly for optimizing your IT infrastructure. This will help you in reducing the costs of the cloud and reaching the optimal potential of cloud solutions. It is going to impact all the aspects of your organization. Cloud can support high performance, remote work, agility, scalability, and cost-efficiency.

Spotify is a prime example of this. They are processing more than 100+ PB of data. Spotify is connecting its creators with billions of listeners. They have surpassed 1 million customers in 2011 itself. They needed some technology to process the 130 million audio files. The best way to deal with this type of problem is by moving to the cloud.

Spotify moved their data and services to the Google cloud. This helped them in accessing secure and flexible storage space. Spotify saved a lot of money by moving to the Google cloud. They were providing a more reliable and better music experience to their customers.

Most organizations are following this same example now. They are paying a lot of money for handling the on-premise data centers. You need to spend money on buying hardware and upgrading the hardware. They are restricted to a less accessible and flexible. These in-house data centers are unreliable in nature.

Cloud migration is going to look different for every organization. There is no one migration plan that every company can use. Evert IT asset needs to be moved to the cloud. These IT assets will be different in terms of performance, complexity, and cost. You can’t move all your IT assets by using the same method. First, you should create a roadmap of your cloud migration strategy. This is where the 6 cloud migration strategies will help you.

There are 6 R’s of cloud migration. These strategies will help you in moving all your IT assets to the cloud. The main 6 strategies of cloud migration are:

1. Rehost

Suppose that you want to move your database to AWS. Also, you don’t want to spend a lot of effort. Rehosting is the best solution for you. It is the easiest and quickest cloud migration strategy. Rehosting will help you in moving your data without doing any code-level changes.

You need to move your data assets from your on-premise IT infrastructure to the cloud. This will help you in increasing the performance and speed of the cloud. You will also pay less for your cloud services. There are various tools available in the market like AWS VM Import/Export and CloudEndure migration for automating these things. If you want then you can also go for the manual implementation. This will help you in gaining cloud maturity. Your IT team can learn a lot by doing manual migration.

There are various benefits of rehosting. However, you can’t enjoy all the features like autoscaling and ephemeral compute. Legacy applications can also sometimes face latency issues. This is generally because your cloud environment is not compatible with legacy applications.

2. Replatform

This is just a modified version of the last strategy. Replatform will help you in doing configurational changes to your applications. This will ensure that your applications will be more compatible with the cloud environment. You don’t need to worry about changing the core architecture of your applications. Developers are using the replatform strategy for changing the way how their applications interact with the database. This will ensure that they can communicate with managed platforms like Amazon RDS or Google CloudSQL.

You should also ensure that you are regularly reviewing your project. This will ensure that your project won’t convert into a full refactoring. The main thing is that you need to avoid unnecessary changes.

If you are in a time crunch, then you should use this strategy for moving your applications to the cloud. You can enjoy the benefits of cloud architecture without changing your application. It will help you in moving your complex on-premise applications to the cloud. All you need to do is minor tweaks in your applications. This will help you in enjoying the cloud benefits.

3. Re-architect

Re-architect or refactor method is heavily used in the industry. You need to rewrite your applications from scratch. This will help you in making your applications cloud-native. You can use this strategy for enjoying the full potential of cloud technologies like containers, FaaS, load balancers, serverless, and microservices architecture. For example, if you are moving a monolithic architecture to the cloud, then you need to refactor that asset according to the serverless architecture. These applications will be efficient and agile in nature. Thus, you will get a better Return on investment even in tough markets.

Refactoring is the most resource-intensive and expensive strategy. You need to spend a lot of time refactoring your applications. However, this will give you amazing benefits in the long run. Some of the challenges that you will face are a lack of cloud skills, business disruption, and complex projects. The main way to deal with this is by dividing your applications into smaller chunks. You need to prioritize smaller chunks of your applications. Make sure that you are running the legacy applications on your on-premise infrastructure.

You should use refactoring if you want to enjoy all cloud benefits. If your on-premise application is not compatible with the cloud provider, then refactoring is the last option for you. Also, if your business’s main goals are to add speed, performance, and scalability, then you should use this strategy.

4. Repurchase

The drop-and-shop strategy is simple. In this, you need to replace your native applications with cloud software. This simply means that you are moving to the SaaS applications. These tools will provide the same capabilities to your business. There are sometimes licensing changes that you need to deal with. You need to drop the existing license that you are using and go with a new license agreement. The new cloud solutions will provide you with better applications with higher efficiency. You can save a lot of money by using these applications. It will also help you in saving maintenance costs.

For example, you might be moving your CRM to Salesforce. In this case, you can directly switch to Salesforce. This will help you in saving a lot of time. You can eliminate migration efforts by buying SaaS applications.

There are some hurdles that you will face in this method also. You need to train your staff. SaaS platform will also offer very less limited customizability to you. You can’t control these applications according to your needs. Thus, you might lose the advantage of using a custom solution.

You should use this migration strategy if you are replacing tools for standard functions. If your legacy application is not working in the cloud environment, then repurchase is the last option for you. You can also go for refactoring but it will take a lot of time.

5. Retire

In this, you will remove all the applications that are not important or no longer needed for your organization. If you think that some application is not important for your organization, then you can either downsize or eliminate the application. This will help you in exploring all your tools and applications according to their dependencies, uses, and cost. It is considered a passive strategy. According to a report from AWS, more than 10% of organizations’ IT portfolio is not required if you are moving to the cloud.

This might sound like a simple strategy to you. However, this is a complex process. You need to first properly decide the application that you want to retire. This should be done when you are planning the entire cloud migration process. It can help you in reducing the applications that you need to migrate. Thus, it will help you in saving a lot of resources.

You should use this approach if you want to archive some applications. Also, retiring applications with duplicate functionalities will help you in saving a lot of money. You should retire applications whose functionality is already present in some other microservice. This will help you in saving both your time and money.

6. Retain

In this approach, you will revisit some important portions or applications of your IT assets. These applications will need a lot of refactoring before you can move to your cloud environment. You might need to find applications that you can keep in an on-premise IT environment. It is also important to find applications that need to be retained. Sometimes applications are also retained due to compliance or regulatory constraints. If you have some latency requirements, then you can retain applications.

This migration strategy is generally used in hybrid cloud development. It will help you in ensuring business continuity when you are moving your data to the cloud. For example, Hess Corporation used a similar approach for moving their data. They created a hybrid cloud environment for supporting their cloud migration. It offers various benefits like keeping your important data and workloads on-premise.

If you are adopting a hybrid cloud model, then this is a good approach for you. Organizations that are heavily invested in on-premise IT infrastructure also go for this approach. You will have some legacy applications that won’t be compatible with the cloud. These applications are better for on-premise IT infrastructure.

Best Practices for Cloud migration

1. Know your IT infrastructure

You should first your IT environment before you start the cloud migration process. It is important to evaluate each asset in terms of complexity, internal dependencies, size, performance, and cost. This assessment will help you in developing KPI metrics and business cases.

2. Create your migration strategy

You should have a cloud migration strategy. This can be created by using the 6 strategies we have explained in this article. Make sure that you are starting with the small workloads and then moving towards important workloads.

3. Select the right cloud provider

There are various cloud providers available in the market. Make sure that you are getting the best cloud services and tools. If you are working with an MSP, then you should ensure that they are experts in cloud technology. This will help you in simplifying your entire cloud migration process. Experienced MSPs like Bleuwire can help you in moving your applications and data to the cloud.

Conclusion 

You know about the best cloud migration strategies now. There are various aspects of your business that you should consider before adopting any strategy. Your cloud migration strategy will depend on your IT infrastructure, scaling needs, expertise, timeline, security, and costs. Right guidance is very important for successful cloud migration.

Bleuwire can help you in this process. They know everything about cloud migration. You don’t need to worry about manually moving your applications to the cloud. They will help you in ensuring business continuity during the cloud migration process. If you need more information regarding cloud migration, then you should contact Bleuwire.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™  services and solutions in how we can help your business.