Azure is already the second biggest cloud vendor in the market. Most businesses are moving their application and data to the Azure. You can choose between both hybrid and cloud-only mode. However, Azure is mostly a long-term investment. You should create a documented strategy before moving your application and data. This will provide a well-defined structure to your IT team and business leaders. Thus, they will get ready for the cloud environment. The whole process should be handled by the right people. Also, you need the right strategy and processes for ensuring access. However, this is mostly possible in an ideal world. Most companies will be pulled into several directions.

If you are building your migration plan, then this article is perfect for you. We are going to share some tips that will help you in controlling your cloud migration. Thus, you can avoid a lot of unnecessary challenges.

Sort out security and governance

If you are moving your services to the Azure, then you should first prioritize the governance issues first. This will help you in ensuring a successful cloud transition. You should have the right security and governance framework. If you have the right security framework, then your assets will remain more secure during the migration process. You should enforce your security policies properly. Also, it is important to ensure that you are not using any unnecessary resources. This will help you in decreasing your migration costs. Some of the key areas where you should focus on are:

Policies and Audits:

You should define your policies in the Azure Activity Log. This will help you in understanding the status of your migration process. Also, you can find other important properties like administrative updates, service health, security, and resource health. You can use ARM or Azure Resource Manager for managing your Azure policies. This will help you in protecting your data from outsiders. Also, it will help you in protecting the sovereignty of your data by auditing and restricting some actions. You should assign tags to all resources.

Data Encryption:

You should utilize your time in learning about the encryption capabilities of Azure. This will help you in reducing the probability of a data breach. You can use tools like Azure Key Vault, Azure Information Protecting, and Azure Disk protection for protecting your data. These tools will help you in following the best cloud encryption practices.

Tagging and naming:

If someone is using more resources or servers, then it will increase your cloud spend. This is the biggest reason for the increased cloud costs. Thus, you should enforce server tags before the migration process. Make sure that you are using the same values and names that you were using in the on-premise infrastructure. This will help you in efficiently managing your data assets. Thus, you can quickly identify all your resources. You can find all these resources in your Azure Portal.

RBAC or Role-based access control:

It is important to keep track of your groups and users. If someone is using your Azure resources, then you must know about them. This will ensure that you don’t need to worry about the unexpected usage problem.

Many businesses don’t think about their governance and security framework. However, it is very important to plan your governance framework. This will help you in avoiding resource wastage, unexpected cloud bills, and security risks.

Use secure remote access

If you are migrating to any cloud platform, then it is very important to implement proper access controls. This will ensure that you can properly access your resources. Hybrid-cloud users should have access to both their Azure environments and on-premise infrastructure.

If you have already configured secure remote access, then it will help your admins in the migration phase. Your staff can also use remote access for accessing your new environment. This remote based access should be based on some predefined permissions. It is important to build solid access controls. You can combine them with two-factor authentication. Also, you can use the Azure Active directory for protecting your cloud environment.

Understand the costs

You should have proper knowledge about the costs of Azure migration. Azure is providing many cost benefits to its users. You will only pay for the cloud service that you are using. Also, it is very easy to scale down or up your resources. It is more cost-effective when compared to the on-premise solution.

However, this doesn’t mean that the migration process is very cheap. You should know about your migration costs. This will ensure that you have realistic expectations from your new cloud environment.

Review application compatibility

Most business-critical applications are actually running on legacy technology. Thus, they are not compatible with the latest cloud computing environment.

Business applications are mostly developed to work in a special environment. You should work with your cloud migration partner like Bleuwire. They will help you in finding applications that are not compatible with Azure. You can replace your legacy applications with new tools.

If there are some legacy apps that you don’t want to replace, then you should give sufficient time to your IT team. They will do proper planning for moving these applications to the Azure environment. You can use application virtualization for moving these applications. Also, your team can also try remote desktop services.

Conclusion

It is very difficult to migrate your workload to Azure. This process is not actually risk-free. You need proper planning before moving your assets. This will ensure that you have full control over the migration process. We have mentioned some best migration practices in this article. You can use these practices for creating a perfect plan for your company. It is very important to create a security framework first. This will ensure that your data is safe in the new environment. Most companies don’t understand the true costs of this migration process. Thus, these companies might have unrealistic expectations from their new environment. You should also ensure that your applications are compatible with Azure. If you need more information regarding Azure migration, then you can contact Bleuwire.

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