According to a McKinsey report, by the end of 2024, most companies plan to invest $8 out of every $10 in cloud services, including private cloud, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. This ambitious investment goal will require significant effort from organizations and cloud providers. Cloud migration involves transferring applications, infrastructure, data, and other software components to a cloud environment, typically moving them from on-premises servers to the public cloud, either fully or partially. This process may also include shifting data and applications between different cloud providers. Organizations can choose to migrate their systems as they are or take the opportunity to enhance and modernize them during the migration.
Additionally, migrations can occur between on-premises servers and the cloud. The cloud migration process is complex and encompasses several stages: discovery, planning, migration, optimization, and maintenance. This article will focus on the discovery phase and its crucial role in ensuring a successful cloud migration.
What is the cloud migration discovery phase?
The cloud migration discovery phase is foundational in transitioning your data center and applications to the cloud. This phase is focused on gaining a comprehensive understanding of your current IT setup and crafting the most efficient plan for cloud migration. According to research by McKinsey & Company, while many companies are shifting more of their workloads to the public cloud, inadequate coordination during the migration process often leads to significant challenges. On average, organizations spend 14% more on migration than budgeted initially each year, and 38% face delays of over three months. Over three years, these unforeseen costs can accumulate dramatically, totaling more than $100 billion globally. If not addressed, these issues could result in a loss of over $500 billion shareholder value during the same timeframe. Nevertheless, careful planning and a thorough understanding of the existing IT landscape can help reduce migration costs by up to 30%.
Cloud migration strategies: the 7 Rs
Before embarking on a cloud migration, selecting the appropriate strategy based on your business and technical requirements is essential. Here are seven cloud migration strategies, known as the “7 Rs”:
Retire: Identify and phase out applications that are no longer needed. Eliminating obsolete systems reduces complexity and cost during the migration process.
Replatforming (Lift, Tinker, and Shift): Optimize applications slightly to benefit from cloud features without fundamentally changing their architecture. This strategy might involve adopting a managed database service or a cloud-based load balancer.
Refactoring (Re-architecting): Rearchitect and redevelop applications to utilize cloud-native features fully. Although this approach can maximize cloud benefits, it requires substantial time and resources.
Relocation: Move entire data centers to the cloud without modifying the applications. This approach is often achieved using virtual machines and is suitable for large-scale migrations.
Rehosting (Lift and Shift): This method transfers applications from on-premises servers to the cloud with minimal changes. It is often the quickest and works well for applications that do not need modifications to operate in the cloud.
Repurchasing: Switch to a different product, typically a SaaS solution. For example, we are migrating from a self-hosted CRM to a cloud-based CRM like Salesforce.
Retain (Revisit): Some applications are temporarily kept on-premises, often because they are not yet ready for migration. This approach is used for applications with complex dependencies or high-security requirements.
The cloud migration discovery phase is crucial as it helps determine the most effective strategy for each application. By thoroughly understanding your IT landscape, you can identify which applications are best suited for rehosting, re-platforming, repurchasing, refactoring, retiring, retaining, or relocating. This phase ensures that each application is aligned with the most suitable migration approach, thereby minimizing risks and optimizing performance and cost. For instance, the discovery process might indicate that some applications can be quickly migrated with minimal adjustments, while others may need extensive re-architecting to utilize cloud-native features fully.
Importance of the cloud migration discovery phase
The discovery phase in cloud migration is pivotal as it sets the stage for a successful transition to cloud technology. By gaining a comprehensive understanding of your current IT infrastructure and determining your cloud needs, you can prevent unexpected challenges and ensure a smooth migration. This phase is key for identifying potential risks and creating a plan to address them, which helps save time and costs. Additionally, it allows you to align applications with the most suitable migration strategies, optimizing both performance and cost efficiency.
Maintaining business continuity
Effective execution of the cloud migration phase is essential for ensuring business continuity. Through meticulous planning and execution, you can minimize downtime and disruptions to your operations. This careful approach guarantees that your business continues functioning seamlessly throughout the migration process, avoiding significant interruptions and maintaining operational stability.
Enhancing resource utilization
Migrating to the cloud enables businesses to optimize their resource utilization. Companies can manage their assets more efficiently by replacing costly on-premises infrastructure with scalable cloud resources. For instance, Netflix utilizes cloud services to dynamically scale their streaming capabilities based on demand, ensuring a smooth viewing experience even during peak times. This strategy not only reduces costs but also enhances operational efficiency.
Improving security and compliance
The cloud migration phase plays a crucial role in enhancing security and compliance. Cloud providers typically offer advanced security features and adhere to industry regulations, providing a more secure environment than many traditional on-premises solutions. For example, a healthcare provider migrating their telehealth application to the cloud can benefit from robust security measures and adherence to HIPAA regulations. This transition ensures patient data remains secure and private, supporting trust and mitigating potential legal issues.
Essential steps for a successful cloud migration strategy
A successful cloud migration hinges on a well-defined strategy, ensuring every transition aspect is meticulously planned and executed. Here are the key steps involved:
Validate the discovery data
The initial step in the cloud migration strategy is to validate the discovery data. It involves confirming the accuracy and completeness of the information collected during the discovery phase. Ensuring that all data regarding your current IT infrastructure, applications, and dependencies is correct is crucial for making informed decisions throughout the migration process.
Identify the business and technical drivers
The next step is to identify the business and technical drivers for the migration. It involves understanding the reasons behind the move to the cloud, such as cost reduction, scalability, performance enhancements, or improved security. Clearly defining these drivers helps prioritize migration efforts and aligns them with the company’s objectives. For instance, a global HRMS provider might prioritize applications that can leverage cloud scalability and availability to support international expansion.
Validate the migration strategies
Once the drivers are identified, the next step is to validate the migration strategies. It involves evaluating different approaches for moving applications to the cloud, such as rehosting, refactoring, or rearchitecting. Each application may require a specific strategy depending on its complexity, dependencies, and role within the business.
Validate the migration patterns
Finally, the migration patterns must be validated to meet the organization’s needs. Migration patterns are repeatable solutions designed for common scenarios, including data migration, application migration, or hybrid migration. By validating these patterns, companies can utilize proven methods that minimize risks and maximize efficiency.
These steps are crucial for developing a successful, efficient, and smooth cloud migration strategy.
Disaster recovery in cloud migration
Disaster recovery in cloud migration involves swiftly implementing strategies and processes to restore an organization’s data and applications. This is essential for resuming business operations promptly after a disaster or cyberattack.
Data backup
Regular data backups are fundamental to disaster recovery. This involves creating and storing copies of data in multiple locations to ensure its safety and retrievability in case the primary data is lost.
Redundancy
Establishing redundancy is crucial for disaster recovery. This means implementing backup systems and resources so that if one system fails, others can seamlessly take over without causing significant downtime.
Failover mechanisms
Another key component is automatic failover mechanisms. These systems ensure that operations are smoothly transferred to a backup system in the event of a failure, minimizing disruptions.
Testing and drills
Regular testing and drills are vital for effective disaster recovery. Conducting these exercises ensures that the disaster recovery plans are functional and that all team members understand their roles and the plan’s execution.
Incorporating these disaster recovery elements in cloud migration helps ensure business continuity and reduces data loss, allowing organizations to recover quickly from unexpected disruptions. For instance, a company moving to the cloud might use multiple data centers across various regions, ensuring that others can maintain operational continuity if one data center fails.
Are you keen to get started with the cloud migration process?
If you are searching for a reliable company to perform your cloud migration project safely and resiliently, we are here to help. The Hystax team helps move all workloads to the preferred cloud quickly, effortlessly, and fully automatedly, and in case of necessity to protect your business-critical applications.
Our experts will be with you every step of the way to ensure that your cloud data migration significantly enhances your operations. Feel free to reach out, and let’s start the conversation!
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