8 Ways to Prepare for Cloud Migration
Cloud migration should be a systematic and considered process. Businesses that rush the process without planning often experience challenges or limited success.
The process should touch every aspect of your business to ensure a successful migration. This includes IT, operations, and management structures.
Here are some strategies you can use to prepare for migration.
1. Adopt a Cloud Strategy
To begin your cloud migration journey, you must have a strategy to guide the process. The strategy should define the level of integration and the teams involved.
There are six Rs of cloud migration: re-hosting, re-platforming, refactoring, repurchasing, retaining, and retiring. These strategies determine the level of migration, whether deep or shallow.
Deep migration involves moving all your resources to the cloud. Shallow migration means moving part of your resources while retaining some on-premise. For example, you may want to host an application on a cloud service provider (CSP) but keep your database on-premise.
You also define yourcloud deployment modelin the strategy. Each model has its benefits and drawbacks. Determining which one works for your business environment is up to you. A strategy accesses your infrastructure and resources and determines which ones to migrate.
The strategy phase is one of the most crucial parts of migration; it determines whether you will have success or imminent failure. It’s better to include the potential CSPs to determine which of their services works best for you.
2. Choose a Cloud Service Provider
After compiling a strategy, the next step is to choose a Cloud Service Provider (CSP). There are many cloud service providers offering different kinds of services. Choose the one that meets your business’s needs and requirements.
Consider aspects like pricing, security, services, performance, and compliance procedures of your CSP. You cancompare services between Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. You can pick the CPS that offers services best suited to your business.
3. Determine the Total Cost of Ownership
Once you’ve chosen a CSP, it’s possible to begin to estimate your budget for migrating to the cloud. The focus should be on the costs you will incur to move your resources to the cloud.
For most organizations, the more resources you have to migrate, the more expensive it is. You may also have to check for compliance regulations governing data management.
There may be a need to pay for licensing or adhere to certain legislation. Most CSPs take care of most of the legislation and compliance requirements. But it’s good to know what you need to take care of yourself.
Training or hiring staff to manage the cloud environment is expensive. You must dedicate time and money to preparing your team for the cloud-native environment.
4. Accommodate Change
Adapting to the new environment is an important part of moving to the cloud. Cloud computing comes with new features, management styles, and operational styles.
Your team must understand the cloud environment before migration. One way is to conduct training, workshops, and awareness programs for relevant teams. Your team can takecloud computing coursesand gain certifications to broaden their knowledge and skills.
you may also refactor your resources for the cloud environment. For example, you can redesign resources to fit into the cloud-native environment. This includes testing applications, data, and other resources migrating to the cloud.
5. Create a Roadmap
Creating a detailed timeline for migration is the next step. The most crucial part of the migration is moving on-site resources to the cloud.
Moving data from on-premises to cloud resources depends on your cloud adoption strategy. you could choose to move data gradually or all at once.
Your roadmap should determine when, what, and how resources will move to the cloud. Establishing a timeline adds to the economic value you get from the cloud. it’s possible to move the most critical data first and follow up with the rest.
A prolonged migration can incur costs before finalizing the migration, which undermines the benefits of cloud resources.
A typical roadmap involves communicating the planned changes, backing data, and labeling resources. You must also know when to move and synchronize the data with cloud resources. Additionally, you should plan to test the resources to ensure the migration succeeds.
Your CSP can help with your migration process. CSPs like AWS have a database migration service. The service simplifies the process of moving your resources to the cloud.
6. Establish a Center of Migration
Create a task force to spearhead the migration process. This team may include the IT department and management responsible for cloud services.
This team solely focuses on migration. They help to implement the migration strategy by assessing what’s needed and acquiring those resources in readiness for migration.
You should provide them with the necessary resources for a successful migration. These can be training materials, infrastructure, and tools.
it’s possible to include your CSP to assist the team in preparing for migration. The CSP can help the team familiarize themselves with available tools and services. This knowledge will help manage infrastructure in the cloud efficiently.
7. Communicate Effectively
Ensure the strategy and migration goals are well communicated to the target audience. You should create a communication strategy alongside the migration strategy.
You can create documentation detailing the migration process and strategy. Create tutorials and guides that visualize the migration process. If you communicate effectively, the team will clearly understand the migration process and their roles.
8. Post-Migration Forecasting
It’s essential to plan for post-migration. Once migration is complete, you enter another phase to optimize the cloud environment. You have to create a strategy to monitor and manage resources, performance, and costs.
A mismanaged cloud environment will have you compromising your business needs. you may also incur unnecessary charges, making the migration less cost-effective. Which undermines the whole process of using cloud resources.
Ask your CSP to assist with recommendations on how to benefit the most from their system. They may help you to mutually benefit from the cloud environment.
Other Key Areas to Consider Before Migration
There are likely to be other factors exclusive to your business. One further example is of managing the shared responsibilities in the cloud.
A good way to secure your applications is access management. You should create an encryption system to safeguard your applications in the cloud too.
You’ll also need to monitor resources to ensure they meet your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Also, you must budget and conduct cost management to ensure you get value for your money.
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