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Cloud migration has become essential for businesses embracing digital transformation. It improves operational efficiency, flexibility, scalability, and security and minimizes additional infrastructure costs. A Flexera report stated that over 90% of businesses now use the cloud in one form or another, with around 87% of organizations adopting a multi-cloud option for their infrastructure.
Migrating to a cloud environment offers several benefits, including security, agility, scalability, and minimizing IT infrastructure costs. However, the cloud migration process is not easy and has its challenges.
A survey report from McKinsey and Company stated that 70% of cloud migration processes fail to meet their aims due to poor planning and a lack of skillful professionals. In this blog, you will explore the cloud migration process explained in detail.
You will navigate through 7 key cloud migration steps involved in successfully transforming the cloud ecosystem.
7 Key Steps for a Successful Cloud Migration Process
Adopting cloud technology can transform a business. Here are a comprehensive 7 essential steps for the cloud migration process that can help achieve a successful and smooth transition for your business.
Step 1: Assessing the Current Business Infrastructure
The first step in the cloud migration process begins with evaluating the current infrastructure involving the hardware, software, and data systems to identify any potential risk and look for any requirement for optimization. This assessment will help to determine if the existing infrastructure is ready to begin the cloud migration process.
Once the assessment is complete, it will be easy to understand the current situation of the business infrastructure. It will help to determine where changes are needed and what steps are required to ensure the cloud migration process.
Here are the aspects that are required to be accessed for the smooth cloud migration process:
- Complete Inventory: This is the entire catalog of both hardware and software. It will help identify outdated and unutilized resources. This assessment will help understand which resources are essential for business operations and which need replacement.
- Storage: Evaluation of storage and its architecture, as well as its accessibility, is necessary. It helps identify any bottlenecks or vulnerabilities in data management that can be improved while migrating to cloud infrastructure.
- Data Security and Compliance: It will help identify vulnerabilities and potential risks in the existing security infrastructure. It will help in understanding whether all compliance requirements and industry standards are met. Migrating to the cloud from outdated infrastructure will adhere to the latest compliance regulations and standards.
- Cost Evaluation: Assessing current infrastructure helps understand current business costs, which can then be compared to potential cloud migration expenses. It will help create a detailed cost-benefit analysis plan, which will help manage cloud expenses better.
Step 2: Choosing the Right Cloud Service Module Suitable for Business
Choosing the right cloud service module for the cloud migration process is essential. It comes in three general models: public, private, and hybrid. Each of them has different control levels, security, and scalability. The right cloud module will help the business with its final objectives, security, and scalability.
- Public Cloud Ecosystem: The public cloud is like a storage and network managed by a third-party cloud service provider. Examples of cloud providers are Amazon AWS, Oracle Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and more. They offer great scalability, flexibility, and security to cost-effectively store an enterprise’s sensitive data.
- Private Cloud Ecosystem: Private cloud infrastructure offers greater control and security by hosting the cloud ecosystem in a dedicated environment, which can be on-premises or a third-party data center. This cloud module is best recommended to businesses that are strict with regulatory requirements, manage sensitive information, or are looking for an on-premises to cloud migration for enhanced scalability and flexibility.
- Hybrid Cloud Ecosystem: This cloud module combines public and private clouds. It enables the business to maintain some services on a private cloud while leveraging the functionalities of the public cloud for other applications. With a hybrid cloud environment, businesses can flexibly distribute their workload while improving security and performance cost-effectively.
Step 3: Choosing the Right Cloud Service Provider Suitable for Business
One of the essential cloud migration steps is selecting the right cloud service provider. Various leading cloud service providers, such as Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, AWS, Oracle Cloud, and more, offer a wide range of services. Each has its benefits and weaknesses. After carefully evaluating the characteristics and which cloud service provider best suits your business, go for it.
- Service Offered: Analyse what cloud services are provided and whether they align with your business requirements. It may include computing power, security features, networking, storage capacity, or the ability to integrate with other third-party applications.
- Security Structure and Compliance: Evaluate the security measures the cloud service provider offers and its compliance certifications. Check whether they meet the latest industry standards and apply them to your business.
- Expenses: Compare the costs offered by different cloud providers. Also, evaluate which provider suits your business budget, data transfer costs, scalability, and other factors.
- Service-Level Agreements (SLAs): Review the SLAs of different service providers to understand their availability, performance guarantees, and response time during critical issues.
Step 4: Creating a Cloud Migration Strategy in Detail
The success of the cloud migration process mainly depends on proper planning. A detailed cloud migration strategy ensures a seamless transition while reducing downtime, elevating performance, and aligning with the business’s objectives. Here is the outline of a cloud migration strategy:
- Timeline and Goals: A clear timeline and realistic goals should be established to ensure a seamless cloud migration process.
- Roles and Responsibilities: Define the roles and responsibilities of the team members involved in the cloud migration process. This will help ensure a seamless process while avoiding confusion and miscommunication.
- Approach for Migration: Select an appropriate migration approach that aligns with business requirements and complexities. Some of the common migration approaches include:
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- Lift-and-Shift Migration Process: This process allows seamless migration of a legacy application from an outdated environment to a new platform without changing the existing codes. It is considered one of the most ideal and quick legacy transitions.
- Refactoring: This approach is generally suitable for businesses that want to integrate and leverage most cloud-native features more efficiently. Refactoring involves reworking the original codes.
- Rearchitecting: This approach is most suitable for businesses that want to completely leverage the cloud by redesigning the entire infrastructure.
- Risk Management Plan: It helps identify potential vulnerabilities and risks, such as data loss, downtime, and more while developing disaster recovery plans to eliminate them.
Step 5: Application and Data Migration
Moving data and applications to a cloud environment is the most critical cloud migration step. It’s essential to ensure these applications and data are accessible and functional after the migration. Here are some critical points to keep in mind for a successful transition:
- Data Management: The data must be segregated and cleaned before the migration process starts. Eliminating redundancy is vital to avoid transferring unnecessary information.
- Data Migration Methodologies: Select an appropriate data migration method depending on the information sensitivity and volume. Various options are available, such as physical migration or online transfers.
- Application Modifications: Ensure the applications are compatible with the new cloud infrastructure. Some applications may require optimization or reconfiguration to work more efficiently in the cloud ecosystem, while others may need replacing or refactoring.
Step 6: Monitor, Optimize, and Secure Your Cloud Infrastructure
Once the cloud migration process is completed, you must observe and optimize the performance to see whether your applications are working efficiently and are secure. The ongoing optimization and management allow cloud infrastructure to efficiently meet the business’s objective.
- Performance Monitoring: Using monitoring tools, observe the performance of applications, servers, and storage on the cloud. This allows you to identify potential risks before they impact on business operations.
- Security and Compliance: Regularly monitor the cloud environment for security vulnerabilities and ensure compliance regulations are met. Monitor for security patches and update them immediately to avoid cyberattacks.
- Cost Optimization: Check whether resources are efficiently working and implement automated scaling, which can easily manage any spikes in workload and operate accordingly. This will help you manage costs without any discrepancies in expenses.
Step 7: Employee Training and Seamless Adoption for Cloud Infrastructure
Successful cloud migration is not about adopting the latest technologies but how efficiently the new systems are utilized for better performance. To ensure this, employee training is essential to seamlessly adapt to the new changes and work efficiently in the updated infrastructure.
Prioritizing training and support will not only allow employees to leverage cloud features to improve their efficiency and performance but also help them develop innovative solutions.
- Training Programs: Conducting training sessions for employees to understand the new cloud infrastructure and how to operate on it will help them adjust to it and work without compromising their performance.
- Change Management: Create a culture where changes are readily accepted. Establish clear communication, explain to the teams the benefits of cloud migration, and address all their issues. Also, engage leaders, managers, and stakeholders in the communication channel and involve them for seamless adoption.
- Feedback: Once the cloud migration process is completed, compile employee feedback reports regarding the cloud migration challenges they have encountered and how promptly they have addressed them to eliminate them. This will help ensure a smooth transition to the new cloud environment.
How Will Stromasys Help in Seamless Cloud Migration Process?
Stromasys is the global leader in legacy applications migration. It offers hardware virtualization and emulation solutions across the globe for legacy hardware like Sun SPARC, PA-RISC, PDP-11, Alpha Servers, DEC VAX, and more. Its Charon emulation solution uses the lift and shift migration process on a new modern platform like x86 servers or cloud platform without changing codes. It mimics the environment of the existing hardware on the new platform where the legacy applications and operating systems can seamlessly operate.
For businesses looking to migrate to cloud infrastructure, Stromasys is a one-stop solution for transforming their legacy systems with the Charon on the Cloud solution. It partners with several cloud providers like Oracle Cloud, AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and more to offer seamless transformation to a cloud environment that best suits your business objectives and requirements. The pay-per-subscription allows businesses to only pay for services they have availed, cutting down on additional costs.
To know more about how Charon on the Cloud can transform their business, contact our Stromasys experts.
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Conclusion
A successful cloud transformation needs a well-planned migration strategy, including an initiation plan, implementation, execution, optimization, post-migration, and training, to fully leverage the cloud’s potential for better performance and efficiency. Cloud migration has several benefits, including scalability, flexibility, security, and minimizing operational costs. It also enables businesses to incorporate advanced applications and tools incompatible with on-premises physical hardware.
Also, it is important to understand the business goals and challenges, as this will help in selecting the right cloud module and service provider for a seamless cloud migration process. A strategic approach tailored to the organization’s specific needs will help maximize the long-term benefits of cloud adoption.
