Cloud Computing has brought about a revolution in technology and business, making it possible for companies to attain better scalability. Besides, it helps companies to maintain their data without worrying about hardware or software issues. Cloud computing utilizes modern technology for easier accessibility and data sharing across different devices.
It provides shared resources, software, and information over a network using remote servers or access points. It allows users to use services on-demand that are hosted on remote computers rather than having to install software locally. Cloud computing facilitates users to share resources like storage space and processing power with other people or organizations over the internet.
What is cloud migration?
Cloud Migration involves moving services from on-premise to a public cloud service provider’s infrastructure and then migrating the workloads to the new environment. Cloud migration has many benefits, such as lower costs, faster deployment time, higher performance, better security and scalability, and more control over data privacy. It facilitates moving an application or data from a local server to a cloud-based one.
How to prepare the organization for could migration?
Cloud migration can be complex, especially when it involves many different systems and departments. Still, there are ways to make sure that everything goes smoothly. Nowadays it has become hassle-free for the organizations to prepare themselves for cloud migration by understanding the importance of digital transformation, adopting and leveraging new technologies, and changing their IT strategy. This article will discuss what it takes to prepare your organization for moving to the cloud.
The cloud migration strategy includes:
- Initiate the migration-architect part
- Select the cloud integration level
- Deciding between single or multi-cloud
- Setting up Cloud KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
- Determining the performance baselines
- Lining up migration component
- Performing the refactoring
- Implementing data-migration plan
1. Initiate the migration-architect part:
The migration architect is a system architect role where an individual is accountable for planning and accomplishing all the migration aspects. They define the refactoring needed for a successful migration, curating strategies for migrating data, and determining the requirements of cloud solutions. It also fixes the priorities of migration alongside production switchover technicalities. When handling large migration projects, it is crucial to have a designated migration architect who can handle all aspects of migration who can finally contribute to the success of project without glitches.
2. Select the cloud integration level:
It is crucial to choose between a shallow or deep integration. In the case of shallow cloud integration, the on-premises applications are moved to the cloud. It is also known as lift and shift as there are no or restricted changes to the cloud servers for running the application. During deep cloud integration, the applications are modified for utilizing the critical cloud capabilities, thus enabling the usage of serverless computing capabilities such as AWS Lambda or it might also involve using cloud-specific dats store such as DynamoDB and Amazon S3.
3. Deciding between single or multi-cloud
The best way to determine which cloud to use is what your company needs and wants from its technology. For example, if your company needs high availability and scalability, you should consider using Amazon Web Services (AWS). If your company needs low-cost services that are easy to scale up, you should consider using Google Cloud Platform (GCP). However, deciding between single or multi-cloud is not as simple as we have mentioned and may need an expert cloud service provider. A cloud service provider can assess the cloud computing needs of the organization and suggest the right way for your organization.
4. Setting up Cloud KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
It is vital to establish the right KPIs to measure the success of the migration. The main KPIs include users’ satisfaction and cost savings, performance, security, and reliability of the cloud. The objective of KPIs is to evaluate certain aspects of cloud migration, such as revenue generation, cost per conversion, uptime improvement, and detection of technical threats/vulnerabilities. Apart from these, a whole other set of cloud migration KPIs come into picture like Page load time, Lag, response time, session duration, error rates, Apdex, throughput, application performance, component performance, and most importantly user experience.
Some organizations even track business engagement, disk performance, network throughput, CPU usage %, cart adds, conversion percentage and engagement rates. Once the KPIs are set for each category, metrics can help determine which is most important for your organization.
5. Determining the performance baselines
Establishing performance baselines is an indispensable step in migrating to the cloud. It will help business owners and IT professionals understand what they should expect from the new systems and what needs to be done for them to be up and running as soon as possible. It defines the computing power, storage space, network bandwidth, etc. Baselines also help organizations determine the migration status and check the performance of how the migration is performing. Setting a baseline metric for each KPI helps determine how long must the organization collect data to check the performance. Choosing a longer period may be time consuming, however it provides the exact representative data required.
6. Lining up migration components
It is important to understand what elements should be prioritized when migrating to the cloud. Identify business priorities and how you will use the cloud. Also, consider your company\’s goals for moving to the cloud. It will help determine which components you need to prioritize. A cloud service provider may help you by mapping out a plan to migrate to cloud based on complexities: small, medium, and large.
7. Performing the refactoring
Cloud migration is a process that should be done with caution. It can be difficult to migrate your codebase to the cloud, especially if you have a lot of legacy code. Refactoring is changing the internal structure or organization of a software system to improve its design or make it easier to maintain and extend. But performing the refactoring is essential to makes your organization become cloud ready and handle all migration successfully.
8. Implementing data-migration plan
Create a data-migration plan and ensure that all the information is backed up. Define and assess how your company can benefit from the move to the cloud, what data you will need, how you will store it, and what security measures you will need. The best way is to use a cloud-migration service provider who can be involved right from the data-migration planning to the execution.
Conclusion
The cloud system increases speed and flexibility, lowers costs, and reduces the risk. Data centers are becoming obsolete with cloud migration, and companies can now access their data from any device. It helps to switch over production from the old data centers to new ones. Cloud migration provides the company with a more flexible and cost-effective way to manage their production with resource optimization.
Rapyder, is one of the leading AWS Cloud Service Provider known to help thousands of organizations move to cloud seamlessly across the cloud. Get in touch with our Cloud experts today and migrate to faster ways of managing business through Cloud.
