Let’s welcome 2020 with a Cloud based discussion, specifically let’s talk about Cloud Migrations.

Cloud computing has been around now for more than a decade and it has become very common for organisations to execute cloud migrations in order to move their IT and Data Center capabilities into cloud-based infrastructure managed and maintained by service providers like AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.

If you are planning to move to the cloud you will find the following points very useful in order to maximize your chances of executing a successful cloud migration.

• Establish the Migration Team
  This team is formed of technical resources such as migration architects and SMEs and project managers. The Migration team will plan and evaluate all aspects of the migration which include designing strategies for data migration, defining cloud-solution requirements, and determining migration priorities. In a large migration project, there are many decisions and technical plans that must be made for which it is necessary to have a migration architect who is responsible for all aspects of the migration.
• Choose your approach
  In a simplistic way there are two integration approaches to consider:
  1. For a shallow cloud integration, you don’t need to use cloud-unique services. This model is also known as lift-and-shift because the application is shifted to the cloud intact.
  2. For a deep cloud integration, you have to modify your application during the migration process which involves using auto-scaling and dynamic load balancing.
• Choose your Cloud Providers.
  You need to choose whether you pick a single provider and migrate or you want to run your application on multiple cloud providers.

3 Cloud Migration Strategies

According to your needs, choose one of the three strategies listed below:

• One application in one cloud, another application in a different cloud.
• Split your application across multiple cloud providers, mean one part of the application on one cloud and another is on another cloud.
• Build your applications to be cloud-agnostic, this will split the load of the application over different clouds.

Define your Metrics

Next, you need to establish your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
KPIs are metrics to measure the performance of your application or service against your expectations. Most important, cloud migration KPIs are helpful in determining the progress of migration also they help in finding when the migration is completed and successful.

Set a baseline metric for every decided KPI for measurement. Determine how long you will collect data to determine the baseline. Defining a baseline includes measuring the current performance of your application or service before the migration to determine the acceptability of its after migration performance. Baselines also help in determining when the migration is complete. Baseline metrics are used to diagnose any problems that arise during cloud migration.

Schedule your Migration

Now you need to prioritize your services and applications for cloud migration, you have to decide whether you will migrate your entire application to the cloud at once, or you will migrate it component by component or service by service.

One of the trickiest parts of cloud migration is data migraton. The location of your data that is to migrate impacts the performance of your application. So the complexity and importance of data migration planning can’t be underestimated. In the data-migration planning process, your migration architect should be deeply involved.

One of the final steps is to make a decision about when and how to switch from the legacy on-premise solution to the new cloud version. It depends on the complexity and architecture of your application, whether you do it all at once (big bang) or do it a little bit at a time with a phased approach.

Bottom line

I would recommend everyone who’s looking at planning a cloud migration to get familiar with topics like building modern applications using services and microservices and other cloud migration terms and cloud service providers, and use automated cloud migration tools for building and running cloud services and applications.

Should you need any help in planning or executing your cloud migration please Get in Touch!