Embracing the strength of the cloud has become inevitable to succeed in today’s digital era. This is true especially when more and more businesses are migrating their applications to the cloud to drive growth. According to Gartner, the global spending on public cloud services is forecast to increase to $332.3 billion in 2021, up from $270.0 billion in 2020. By 2024, more than 45% of IT spending will shift from conventional solutions to the cloud.
Despite heavy spending on the cloud, one in every 3 companies fail to recognize its benefits. 33% of businesses have seen no or slight improvement in organizational effectiveness after cloud adoption. So is there any way to avoid a cloud project failure? The answer lies in choosing the right cloud migration strategy and methods for your IT assets.
This blog intends to provide you with a better understanding of a suitable cloud migration approach. It will hopefully help you create a path for migration and a smooth transition to the cloud.
Let’s start with understanding cloud migration.
What is Cloud Migration?
Cloud migration isn’t pretty much moving to the cloud. It is an iterative optimization procedure to reduce expenses and reach the full potential of the cloud. It influences all the organizational aspects, including people, processes, and technology. But with flexible consumption and pricing models, the cloud can help excessive scalability, performance, agility, remote work, and cost-efficiency.
Each organization’s journey to the cloud is unique, as there is no one-size-fits-all migration plan. Each IT asset to be migrated is specific in terms of cost, performance, and complexity. So you can not move all components to the cloud with one technique. Making a roadmap for the migration will answer the questions of what, how, and in what order to transport these components. This is wherein the cloud migration strategy comes into play.
Broadly referred to as the 6 R’s of migration, these cloud migration strategies answer the question of how to migrate your IT assets to the cloud. The following quick explanation of every cloud migration strategy:
The 6 R’s of Cloud Migration Strategy
1. Rehost
Say you need to move your on-premises Oracle database to an EC2 instance in AWS with little upfront effort. Then rehosting is for you! It’s one of the fastest and simplest cloud migration strategies that move data without code-level modifications.
Here’s how it works– this “lift and shift” format transfers data assets from on-premises infrastructure to cloud infrastructure, specially adapted for large-scale migrations. What’s more, it additionally complements the speed and overall performance of the cloud at a lower cost. Rehosting may be automated using tools like CloudEndure Migration and AWS VM Import/Export. However, you can additionally go for manual implementation to benefit cloud maturity.
2. Replatform
A modified version of rehosting is this ‘lift, tinker, and shift’ strategy. Replatform allows you to make configurational changes to the apps to better suit the cloud surroundings without changing their core architecture. Developers usually practice this method to change how apps interact with the database. So that they will run on managed platforms like Google CloudSQL or Amazon RDS. Having said that, it’s also important to evaluate your project in intervals, so it doesn’t convert into a whole refactor. The key is to avoid pointless changes to address this risk.
3. Refactor/Re-architect
Refactor or Re-architect method includes rewriting your applications from scratch to make them cloud-native. This cloud migration strategy permits you to understand the full capacity of cloud-native technologies. Some of them are – microservices architecture, serverless, containers, function-as-a-service, and load balancers.
For example, you may refactor assets when you move your digital assets from an on-premise monolithic architecture to a completely serverless architecture withinside the cloud. Even in the most competitive markets, these refactored applications are efficient, scalable, agile, and return ROI in the long run.
This method is the most expensive, resource-intensive, and time-consuming compared to the others; however, it will show the most worth in the long run. Some different challenges you would possibly face can be the shortage of cloud skills, complicated projects, and program delivery, or potentially huge business disruption. The secret is to prioritize smaller chunks of your monolithic utility as microservices and refactor them. Also, permit the legacy applications to run on-premises whilst you rebuild in the cloud to avoid disruption.
4. Repurchase
Repurchase replaces the on-premise application with a cloud-native vendor-packaged software. Another name for repurchase is the “drop and shop” strategy. It generally means shifting to a SaaS (Software as a Service) application with the same capabilities. Effectively, it involves a licensing change sometimes. When you drop the present on-premise license and begin a new license agreement with the cloud company for their solution. The newer, upgraded cloud version gives you a better value with better efficiency, savings on app storage, and maintenance expenses.
5. Retire
In the ‘retire’ strategy, you eliminate applications no longer needed or efficient for your IT portfolio. If an application is considered not well worth migrating to the cloud, it can either be eliminated or downsized. It lets you discover all your applications regarding their uses, dependencies, and cost to the company. It is a passive cloud migration strategy since there is no migration involved.
6. Retain
Retaining is revisiting a few critical applications/portions of your digital assets that need a huge amount of refactoring before migrating them to the cloud. It is also known as re-visit. Eventually, you can figure out that a few applications are more suitable for on-premise arrangements or have been recently upgraded and need to be retained. In other cases, applications are retained because of latency requirements, compliance, or regulatory constraints. It could also certainly not be cost-efficient.
Concluding Remarks!
Cloud migration is a tough journey, yet, it doesn’t have to be with the right knowledge and direction. Cloud migration strategies aren’t definitive but surefire methods to start with migration planning. The choice of strategies also relies upon which migration version you choose or have in place in your organization. For Example – Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), or Platform as a Service (PaaS). Thus, your migration plan can combine some of these strategies or all of them, as there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
FAQs
1. What are the benefits of Cloud Migration?
Organizations choose to transport to the cloud-primarily because of the impeccable IT service companies. When you decide to adopt cloud migration, focus only on the benefits. Cloud is cost-effective and scalable, so not simply large-scale. However, small and medium-scale organizations are using cloud technology.
2. Do you need additional IT Staff?
Handling the fine details of the cloud is vital. The right professionals can handle every situation and decrease the chances of mishaps. Many organizations frequently ask if they need to hire more IT staff for cloud migration. Well, it depends on which cloud architecture your organization requires.
3. How much does Cloud Migration cost?
The famous cloud migration provider companies, i.e., AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud work on a pay-as-you-go model, i.e., you just pay for your use. Moreover, these provider companies also provide tools, including price calculators and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) calculators for estimating cloud expenses based on your selected offerings and tools.
4. What are the best Cloud Security measures?
The most critical component of using any technology is knowing how impactful, stable, and intense it can be. These days, cyberattackers are common, and organizations need to have security measures in place. However, a cloud system is commonly more stable than private statistics centers. Cloud infrastructure backs up data and gives numerous protection parameters and tools to encrypt data and detect potential cyber threats.
