Transitioning Your Legacy System to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure: A Business Guide to IT Modernization

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The shift towards digital innovation is compelling organizations to reimagine their IT infrastructure. While legacy systems have proven their durability over the years through their reliability and seamless operations, they are now struggling to meet the growing demands of flexibility, security, agility, and compatibility with modern technologies.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) provides seamless options for modernizing legacy systems, maintaining reliability, enhancing performance, and minimizing costs. Businesses that have incorporated OCI into their infrastructure have seen annual growth of more than 40% in 2024, indicating the strong momentum of Oracle Cloud migration among large enterprises.

Here is a comprehensive guide on how to migrate legacy systems to Oracle Cloud while exploring various approaches and best practices for a seamless transition.

Why Choose Oracle Cloud Migration for Legacy Modernization?

Oracle Cloud is a robust cloud solution designed to meet the diverse needs of modern businesses. Whether it is a startup or a large enterprise, businesses are migrating workloads to Oracle Cloud to cater to a wide range of operational needs. It offers a comprehensive suite of services like:

• Modern services and tools for managing databases can reduce administrative demands, such as the Oracle Autonomous Database.
• The Oracle Cloud migration services offer businesses high-performance computing and AI capabilities.
• OCI has inbuilt compliance frameworks for advanced security.
• Seamless integration is possible with Oracle Cloud. Businesses can incorporate ERP, HCM, SCM, and other applications with any scalability and flexibility challenges.
• Quick technical assistance is available for Oracle Cloud to enhance the customer experience.
• The cost of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is consistent across all regions.
• On-demand scalability for managing growth, seasonal, and new workloads.

Understanding the Importance of Oracle Cloud Implementation Strategy

For a seamless transition to Oracle Cloud, businesses should have a well-structured, end-to-end implementation plan in place. This transition will include all IT resources, such as workloads, applications, and information, that are to be migrated to Oracle Cloud.

The key points for a strong strategy should include:

• Zero disruptions and downtime while migrating workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
• Improved revenue and accelerated cloud benefits.
• Seamless alignment of business goals with cloud integration is essential.
• Effective risk management and compliance.

What Are the Key Components of Legacy System to Oracle Cloud Migration?

Here are the significant components that are essential for a seamless legacy system to Oracle Cloud migration strategy:

• Business Objective Alignment: Ensure cloud adoption for specific business goals.
• Applications and Data Evaluation: Having a clear understanding of how and what to migrate.
• Planning Oracle Cloud Migration & Execution: Selecting the right methodology, technologies, tools, and timelines to execute the legacy system to Oracle Cloud migration process.
• Security & Governance Architecture: Securing sensitive information and maintaining compliance to prevent any non-compliance situations.
• Employee Training & Change Management: Empowering teams to explore cloud capabilities and leverage them for better operational outcomes.

Understanding Pre-Implementation Planning

A well-executed Oracle Cloud migration procedure begins even before the migration process starts. It requires rigorous planning to understand technical readiness and business alignments. Conducting the migration process without a proper plan can lead to cost overruns, downtime, and delays.

What Are Pre-Implementation Planning Steps?

Here are the pre-implementation steps to be taken by the organization before migrating workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure:

Step 1: Clarity of Business Objective

Seamless alignment between the cloud migration strategies and business goals, along with smooth communication between the teams. It will ensure there is no miscommunication, which can delay the process or result in cost overrun.

Step 2: Cloud Governance Architecture

Creating policies, roles & responsibilities, risk controls, and other advanced security measures to prevent any governance vulnerabilities. It will ensure secure infrastructure and prevent cyber risks.

Step 3: Conducting Thorough Assessments

Evaluating the current business infrastructure to understand dependencies and the state of migrating legacy systems to Oracle Cloud. It will help identify any vulnerabilities before the Oracle Cloud migration process, allowing them to be eliminated.

Step 4: Choosing the Right Cloud Deployment Model for Your Business

Selecting the Cloud Module That Best Suits Your Business Requirements. Businesses can choose from public, private, and hybrid cloud modules.

Step 5: Building Estimate Budget for Oracle Cloud Migration Project

Using various tools like Oracle cost estimators to build an estimation for legacy systems to Oracle Cloud migration project and planning ROI.

Step 6: Designing the Legacy System to Oracle Cloud Migration Roadmap

Setting milestones and assigning roles and responsibilities to teams helps ensure seamless workload migration and precise execution of the plan within the timeline. It ensures that the migration plan is executed with transparency and accuracy.

Step 7: Conducting training for Gap Analysis

This will help improve the IT team and other departments to ensure there are no operational setbacks post-migration.

Step 8: Designing Security and Compliance Requirements

Creating a roadmap to protect the customer’s sensitive information, along with a robust security infrastructure, will help maintain regulatory standards. Non-compliance can result in hefty fines and legal penalties, which also damage the brand’s reputation.

Step 9: Collaborating with Oracle Cloud Implementation Partners

Partnering with a Certified Oracle expert, such as Stromasys, will facilitate a seamless migration from legacy systems to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, minimizing risks and increasing the chances of project success.

What Are the Different Strategies for Migrating Legacy Systems to Oracle Cloud?

Here are legacy systems to Cloud migration strategies that businesses can choose from:

Strategy	Description	Appropriate For Which Business
Rehost or Lift and Shift	Migrating applications to Oracle Cloud as they are	Quick and easy migration with limited to no changes.
Refactoring or Re-platform	Minor changes are made to leverage cloud capabilities.	To avail benefits from Oracle Cloud migration services.
Re-architect or Revise	Significant changes are being made to modernize the infrastructure.	Outdated legacy applications are migrated to modern applications, such as microservices, for improved operations and efficiency.
Replace or Retire	Completely discarding the legacy systems and moving to a better platform as existing ones cannot function.	Legacy applications with large technical debt.

How Stromasys Can Help with Seamless Legacy System to Oracle Cloud Migration?

Stromasys is a global leader in offering legacy system modernization solutions. For businesses struggling with legacy systems and unable to leverage modern solutions, Stromasys brings Charon to the Oracle Cloud.

This innovative solution will migrate your legacy applications to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. It will extend the life of your legacy applications, allowing them to operate seamlessly without any code modifications.

Is your monolithic architecture preventing you from leveraging modern technologies? Contact our experts, who can help you understand how migrating legacy systems to Oracle Cloud can address your challenges.

Talk to an Expert

Summary

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is a versatile and powerful tool that helps businesses leverage the benefits of cloud. It offers a robust security infrastructure and improved efficiency, minimizing costs by eliminating the need for hardware, reducing downtime and disruptions, and providing reliability, scalability, flexibility, comprehensive database solutions, and exceptional support.

It is not just a simple cloud service but a strategic move that can transform the business to foster innovation and drive long-term success. By migrating legacy systems to Oracle Cloud, businesses can seamlessly operate their existing applications while also leveraging the advanced Oracle Cloud capacities at nearly half the cost they were spending on maintaining those monolithic architectures.