Cloud Migration: 4 Basic Steps for a Successful Migration Process

Nowadays, business in every scale cannot neglect the important existence of the IT technology in improving their productivity and efficiency. As they manage the growth  and expansion, there will be changes needed to adjust in the IT infrastructure niche.

With the increasing demands, the more resources are needed so that the business can cater to their client needs. When it comes to IT infrastructure scalability, the cloud migration strategy enters to help the businesses. 

Obviously, the cloud migration strategy can offer the direct benefit of scalability which your company can leverage. The cloud migration strategy can be challenging because ones should be looking at the proper planning, execution, as well as testing.

The cloud migration strategy defines as a process of migrating the data, apps, and other components to the cloud. Usually, the cloud migration process is prevalent choice for the company with the on-premises computing. The top downside of having on-premises computing is that your work is limited by the current resources. While upgrading the physical resources can be effective, the cloud offers more efficient and effective way to do that. The cloud infrastructure offers direct benefits including cost reduction, security, mobility, scalability, recovery, and so on.

Here are the four basic steps for a successful migration process.

Planning and preparing

Not a single successful cloud migration strategy without a good planning and preparation. You will want to prepare for the migration from the most basic level to the advanced one. Depending on the type of your business, the preparation might be different from others.

Obviously, you will want to start everything for the right reason. You have to find out why in the first place you are considering the cloud migration. It is best to plan it with your core team, or let your manager handle it. But if it involves large migration project, everyone in your core team will need to be involved in the plans and execution.

Moving your IT infrastructure to the cloud requires a lot of time and effort. Basically, there are two main ways to migrate the apps: shallow cloud integration and deep cloud integration.

In the shallow cloud integration, the on-premise app will be moved to the cloud with zero or limited possibilities to change. It is a great option if you plan on using the app without big changes.

If you plan to modify your app during the migration process, you will want to take the deep cloud integration instead.

Select the right cloud environment

There are many cloud models offered over the internet. Before making the migration, you will want to make sure that you’ve browsed all of the options and pick one which you think is the best option.

Normally, you are going to choose between single or multi cloud environment.

It is straightforward to comprehend between the two options mentioned above.

The single cloud environment, as the name suggests, encourage you to use one single cloud provider to handle all of your IT infrastructure. You can either make it public or private depending on your requirements and needs.

With the single provider, it offers you the freedom to scale up your infrastructure needs, although each provider has its own limit. Not only from a single provider, you will also use a single private or public cloud service.

In the multi cloud environment, you will use multiple public or private cloud services. Keep in mind that it is not always from different providers, but this activity is open to that specific possibility.

The deferred multi cloud environment is beneficial when you don’t want to rely on vendor lock-in, or want to avoid it completely.

Chances are you run a company with complex divisions. Each division might have different needs for the clouds. For instance, Sales Department might have different needs than the Internal Audit department, and so on. With the multi cloud environment, you will have the leverage to control the resources and distribute them as needed.

To comprehend the perks of the multiple cloud environment, you will want to learn few coined words such as IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, as well as TaaS.

The moving

After planning and preparation, the next step is to migrate the app and the data. With a proper plan, the migration process should be great and working.

Migrating loads of data can take time and effort to finish. If you are dealing with smaller workloads, you could just use your usual company’s internet connection to carry the process. However, the normal internet connection won’t be sufficient to conduct the larger workloads migration.

Often times, your cloud moving provider offers you to take care of it so that you can preserve your bandwidth for the core activities.

Right before the migration, backing up your data is crucial. Although your provider can guarantee that the data will be secure, you cannot overlook the underlying risk. There could be minor or major errors in your apps and data. You will want to use your backup files by then. Your provider will conduct the resource optimization for you. But make sure you’re able to monitor the whole process.

Testing

After finishing the migration, the final step of cloud migration strategy is to test the app and data. You will want to meticulously check the whole thing. Make sure everything is working well before closing the migration. While all the data is correct, you will want to make sure if your apps are running well. Consider to dispatch your team members to test every app. The end users should not meet any difficulties or errors while they do. Testing the apps and data is also relevant to finding the rooms for improvement. By then, you will be able to decide if some tweaks are needed or not.

Monitor the system and make sure everything runs smoothly. If you manage to identify the issues, you will want to come up with the solution. Your think tank will help you to solve the problem.

Verdict

Moving your business apps and data has never been easier with the help of cloud migration strategy. However, you will want to work with the trustworthy and reliable professionals to make it happen. The complexity of the cloud migration process is unavoidable. Therefore, consider to reach out experts who have the proficiency to help you with this. It is worth your investment.