Cloud Migration strategies

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Challenges with Application, Data, and Infrastructure Migration to the Cloud

Migrating to the cloud is no cakewalk. You need a professional cloud management partner to make the transition seamless, and easy. We can handle all your cloud migration challenges with our customized cloud migration services. Migrate your legacy, on-prem applications, data, or infrastructure from any platform to the Azure/AWS cloud. We help enterprises smoothly transition their business towards digital transformation.

What is Cloud Migration?

Cloud Migration is a path to digital transformation. It is a strategy to move legacy applications/services/data/infrastructure from on-premises to the cloud. Cloud Migration is an important practice among organizations that are facing challenges with an excess of legacy applications, that aren’t aligned with business process, strategy, vision and high cost of ownership that comes with the maintenance of its infrastructure and security. You can partner with a cloud migration service provider to ensure an efficient and cost-effective transition to the cloud.

The Cloud Migration consists of four phases. These include:

When choosing the Cloud Migration strategy, the following 2 factors are important

Advantages of Cloud Migration

Digital Transformation
IT Simplification and Standardization
Enhanced security and compliance
Faster access to infrastructure
Faster time to market
Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery
Optimize cost by moving from Capex to Opex model or Lower Operational Costs
Improved IT productivity and operational efficiency
Minimum Possible downtime
Global reach
Greater availability and unlimited scalability
Higher performance
Rationalize applications portfolio
Operate from anywhere

The cloud journey is unique for every business. There is no straight formula that fits all migration plans. Every application/ data/infrastructure to be migrated is associated with different cost, compute, security, complexity and performance requirements.

The complexity of migrating these legacy applications varies based on existing architecture, vendor locking, existing licensing, investments made on on-premises, etc.

To address the cloud migration challenges, there are 6 application migration strategies commonly known as The 6Rs

The 6Rs are

These are the essential ways to handle the cloud adoption strategy or cloud migration:

Rehost- Lift and Shift

Move as -is to cloud

Rehosting is also known as a “lift and shift” process. It is one of the easiest and quickest cloud migration strategies where an application and data are moved to the selected cloud provider without change in code and architecture.

Replatform -Lift, tinker and shift

In Replatform, we might make a few cloud optimizations to achieve some tangible benefit without any changes to application architecture. It makes optimizations to the application during the cloud migration phase.

Example: Move On-prem SQL to Azure SQL/ AWS RDS to reduce the amount of time in managing the database instances.

Refactor/Re-architect- On-premises to serverless:

Refactoring or Rearchitecting is reimagining how the application is architected and developed typically using cloud-native features. In this, we mostly rewrite applications from scratch to make their cloud-native applications. (For example, microservices architecture, containers, Kubernetes, etc). These refactored applications are scalable, agile and efficient. When an existing application is not compatible with cloud services, we use refactoring.

Repurchase- Drop and Shop-Replace

On-prem to SaaS with the same capabilities

Repurchase means dropping the existing application and moving to a different product with similar capabilities.

Example: Moving CRM application to Salesforce.com

Retain- Do nothing (for now)

Keep Them as it is

Retain applications due to heavy investment made/regulatory/security fears/ latency/compliance/ not many benefits of migrating/ application need refactoring before moving to cloud (Upgrade on-prem tools to latest versions to make them compatible for cloud migration).

Retire- Get rid of

Get rid of unwanted or no longer useful applications for cost and effort savings.

Cloud Migration Challenges

Legacy Applications Compatibility with Cloud

While migrating to the cloud there might be some crucial old/legacy version applications that may not be compatible with the cloud. For example, DigitalNZ faced compatibility issues. That’s why you need to implement a phased approach for your cloud migration process. This means moving apps that don’t require changes, aligning your virtual network to communicate with your on-premises infrastructure, and re-designing or re-architecting a couple of applications when withdrawing the outdated ones.

Choosing the Right Strategy

Many Organizations fail to define their cloud migration strategy due to which they run out of costs, strategies and long-term issues. To avoid this, they need to work with expert IT teams. The ideal way to employ the best strategy is by evaluating your business needs, examining various use cases, and then chalking out a cloud migration strategy.

Cloud Migration Costs

Migrating to the cloud will reduce the costs in the mid and long run, but when it comes to the initial migration process, there are implementation costs involved. Migration to the cloud involves costs depending on your project’s scalability and specific business requirements. Each cloud service comes with unique pricing, so you’ll need to think of a pre-migration estimation to avoid pricing or cost challenges.

Migrating Huge Applications

Applications with heavy customizations and integrations are a challenge due to their complexity. If you have huge applications to migrate to the cloud, choose one at a time.

Migrating Huge Databases

Databases with larger sizes are a challenge to migrate due to their data size. You can team up with us for help with your cloud migration strategy. Choose small periods to move your huge database to the cloud system. It will help you to complete specific tasks within that time. You need to prioritize according to your business needs.

Lack of Technical Skills

Inhouse IT teams might have limited skillsets, this will put your business data and security at risk. The perfect way to bridge the technical skill gap is by working with a cloud management partner. Work with a skilled engineering team to ensure zero disruption and high accessibility.

Training Employees on Cloud Solutions

Ability to become efficient with new systems and policies. Collaborate with a cloud migration service provider to train and upskill your employees on cloud technologies and migration strategies.

Korcomptenz Helped a Recycling Major with Cloud Migration

Did you know that Korcomptenz lend a helping hand to a recycling major to enhance its IT application management time by moving from NAV 2016 to Azure cloud? Our client owns a family business related to recycling management and is based out of Pine Brook, New Jersey, USA.

Client Pain Points

Before approaching us, the client faced some issues such as: