Gone are the days when ‘migration to the cloud’ was still an emerging concept. Providing an unending array of business benefits, cloud migration involves moving varied organizational elements, data, or applications to a more secured and centralized server—a cloud computing environment. Transferring pretty much all of the local data center capabilities into the cloud, companies are nowadays tapping into ‘cloud-based infrastructure as a service, provided by some of the popular cloud service providers—AWS, Azure, Google Cloud to name a few.
Cloud migration services can be of several types, providing varied options for enterprises to opt for the most suitable one for them.
How Cloud Migration Is Directly Proportional to Business Growth?
Deploying digital assets like resources, services/applications in the cloud, and protecting unauthorized access to the migrated assets using a firewall, cloud migration paves the way for organizations to enhance the scalability, security, and transparency of their core assets.
Loaded with smart features like user-friendly applications, enhanced security, ease of access, time-saving features, and qualitative outputs, cloud computing is not only fuelling the growth of businesses but also beckoning non-cloud users to take the leap into this business-changing landscape created by the Cloud.
Discover the Best Types of Cloud Computing
Once you think about the public cloud, it is quite natural to visualize it like any other utility, because this type of cloud deployment model is engaged in shifting applications and data from a local data center to the common centralized server—the public cloud. On the other hand, a model built on the principle of ‘cloud-to-cloud migration’ involves data transfer from one cloud platform/provider to another. Now, what type of cloud deployment model is that?
Let’s find out a few best types of cloud computing models and their respective features, that are successfully transforming global businesses.
5 Strategies Enterprises Should Adopt for Migrating to the Cloud
Research by Gartner suggests five options to migrate to the cloud successfully for any organization. These strategies are often known as the “5 R’s”.
- Rehost – Thought of as ‘lift and shift’, rehosting involves the use of an IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) for the enterprises that choose this strategy. Providing the flexibility of redeploying the organizational existing data and applications on the cloud server, rehosting is getting popular to the organizations that are still behind the adoption curve in cloud migration. Also, rehosting comes as a definite choice for such organizations that are keen to migrate their applications intact, while having difficulty in modifying the codes properly.
- Refactor – Come off as ‘lift, tinker, and shift,’ refactoring provides the companies with advantages, like tweaking and optimizing their applications for the cloud. Enterprises that adopt this strategy are able to reuse the existing code and frameworks, and run their applications on an employed model—PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service). The core architecture of the applications that run through the PaaS platform, remains unchanged; however, a little adjustment of those applications can enhance the efficiency of cloud-based tools.
- Revise – As the name implies, this strategy deals with partially revising or rewriting the code base, and then deploying those codes to the cloud by either using rehosting or refactoring, following any of the above methods.
- Rebuild – Rewriting and re-architecting the application on a PaaS provider’s platform from the scratch is what this strategy ‘rebuilding’ entails. Despite being a labour-intensive process, this strategy excites developers in terms of taking advantage of modern features that come with the PaaS model/platform.
- Replace – Businesses that are choosing to discard their old applications altogether are adopting this strategy, while switching to readymade SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) applications from cloud service providers.
Blueprint for the Cloud Migration Process
Before starting the cloud migration journey, it’s imperative for enterprises to take an end-to-end look at the tools and services that are involved in the journey, along with the potential roadblocks ahead. This ensures effective execution of all the capabilities and activities across the crucial steps of cloud migration, later on, and to overcome some common challenges hindering the process.
There is no one-size-fits-all, when it comes to shifting to the cloud. You need to truly understand your business model, the size and complexity of your on-premise infrastructure, and the migration goal that you’re looking for, before executing the “5 R’s”.
To understand the ins and outs of the existing infrastructure, and realize the true capabilities in terms of having the right tools, businesses should leverage the capabilities of their respective IT teams. With that in the bag, designing a roadmap for ‘what apps to transfer, how and when’, will be much easier to perceive.
Besides the tools, organizations could also rely upon cloud service providers, who help them in seamlessly navigating through different phases of the cloud migration, including migration planning, data migration, server migration, and database migration. Some of the renowned IaaS providers, AWS, Microsoft and Google, provide cost-effective, tiered cloud migration services, including free trials. There are also some Cloud Cost Calculators and Estimation Tools available, that help enterprises determine the cloud configuration cost, before the migration.
However, businesses are often sceptical, from the services and apps transfer standpoint, not being able to make up their minds on whether they should move all the apps and services at once or opt for the hybrid model to store a few assets on-premise.
To avoid this dilemma, you should take a thorough look at the basic migration steps.
1. Execute Your Migration Plan
Easier said than done, moving to the cloud requires multiple approaches, where solid planning in advance should always be the first step towards successful cloud migration. Being clear with your migration goals, and selecting the migration approach that is well-suited for your business needs are indispensable, when it comes to creating a proper cloud migration roadmap.
To start with your cloud migration plan, you should first do a thorough analysis of where your organization is falling on the cloud maturity curve. Upon a careful survey on your existing infrastructure, the evaluation of server, security, and performance requirements, and providing necessary trainings of your teams in DevOps with a specific cloud provider, it will be evident to you, which cloud migration tools are right for you.
2. Select Your Cloud Environment Wisely
After the evaluation of your resource requirements, you can move to the next step of selecting a cloud provider that promises to match your business needs.
Each cloud service provider offers different cloud models to adopt: whether public, private, hybrid, or multi-cloud. Setting up a virtual workspace to test how things will look in the deployment stage, in terms of infrastructure, cost, etc., will provide you with transparency while taking a final call on the cloud environment.
3. Migrate Your Database Carefully
With the right execution of your planning, the process of your apps and data migration should go seamlessly.
Depending on the type and amount of data you need to move at a specific speed, your provider will guide you to take any of the below approaches that lead to successful transfer of your local data to the public cloud:
- An online transfer
- Transferring data either using the public internet or over a private network
- A physical approach to transfer data offline, by uploading the local data onto an appliance (a medium) to ship to your selected cloud provider
Closing Thoughts
Cloud migration may seem like a daunting task; but the benefits far outweigh the challenges. Partnering with an experienced cloud migration service provider can help you ensure a seamless migration process, tailored-made for your applications and data ecosystem.
Josh Software has been bringing about digital transformations of leading global brands, by helping them successfully migrate to the cloud, using the right strategies and workflow models. Using proven templates, we ensure that migrating to the cloud does not accidentally disrupt our client’s business operations, and is carried out systematically.
Start your digital transformation journey, with cloud migration services by Josh Software.
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