We went on to discuss the strategic and cost benefits of the cloud. But what happens when you decide to make the change? Migrating to the cloud is no easy task. For most companies, the entire process can often seem so complex that they just don’t know where to start.
In this blog, we will outline the fundamental steps for a successful cloud migration:
1 – Evaluate your work
It is important to remember that not all cloud models are created equal and that different workloads may need different cloud models. The enterprise-class infrastructure as a service model is intended for business applications and best suited for traditional workloads, when reliability is needed and expected.
2 – Select your cloud provider based on these considerations
The success of migration to the cloud depends a lot on how your selected cloud provider addresses the following elements:
Data Sovereignty
Cloud services can be provided from anywhere in the world, but this poses privacy risks, as there may be jurisdiction and local and international laws involved. Make sure your supplier’s data center is aligned with your business policies.
Data ownership and transferability
Transferability of data upon termination or expiration of the cloud contract is critical to ensuring businesses can continue without any downtime. The ideal provider must meet these needs and have a clearly defined procedure for extracting data.
Programming interfaces
Cloud computing should expose a set of APIs that organizations use to manage and interact with cloud services. Companies can leverage these interfaces to offer value-added services to their customers, to generate better returns from the cloud service.
Storage capabilities
For a business to grow, its workload storage needs can change. It is recommended to select a cloud provider, with different levels of storage to allow you to choose the most appropriate capacity and scale when needed.
Network capacity and bandwidth
It is important that you understand the cloud network services are accessed by potential providers of your network, since it can have a considerable impact on the integration of services during migration or already in production it is essential to consult a network analyst.
Financial stability
Regardless of whether you are considering a short term, long term or strategic relationship with a cloud provider, it is important to choose a financially stable provider.
Companies should take the time to research their supplier’s annual reports and financial statements to find out what they are getting into.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
This is a major concern as they define aspects of cloud service from service availability to data center locations for processes and policies around extraction and termination.
Carefully examine potential cloud providers SLAs to ensure that they align with your needs and expectations.
3 – Evaluate your suppliers’ migration methodology
Once the workload assessment and provider selection are complete, it is time to migrate. Make sure your cloud provider has a robust migration methodology that includes the following steps:
Evaluate and plan
Understand the drivers for the migration, identify any technical problems, evaluate the inventory of the current environment and determine the workloads, dependencies, hardware and software configurations. This will generate the best migration sequence.
Design and build
Assess migration and location options for each workload. Also look at workloads, network design, application profiles, dependency mapping and data protection.
This will generate a report to document the complete migration strategy.
Pilot test
A pilot test is recommended to present any potential risk of migration. It allows you to verify that services have migrated or provisioned and that they meet business requirements and expectations. It ensures critical applications to function as expected in a cloud environment before migrating production instances.
Commissioning
Once the pilot test is successfully completed, the cloud program can be ordered.
This includes the implementation of tools necessary for migration, the placement of workload and network configuration. Tests by the provider and the customer complete the process.
Migration to the cloud involves several moving parts and carries some risks. The right approach can help companies navigate complexities and mitigate those risks.
