Cloud migration can be a tedious process. Organizations must have a solid understanding of their on-premises infrastructure and be aware of the best options available in the cloud. Trying to manage this process manually is nearly impossible, and relying on outdated information can lead one to overlook important facts during the evaluation process. So, enterprises must chalk out a plan by incorporating the 4Rs of cloud migration, including re-hosting, refactoring, re-platforming, and replacing.

Focus on the current infrastructure

• You need to have a good understanding of all the applications and machines in your infrastructure for a successful cloud migration.
• The discovery phase is very essential for successful cloud migration due to the fact that understanding everything that exists in your infrastructure is crucial at every other step in the cloud migration journey.
• Whether you are calculating a TCO or designing a migration plan, the best way to successfully accomplish this task is to start with an accurate discovery.
• Unfortunately, however, not many companies approach discovery correctly. Many depend on a CMDB, which is a time-consuming and tedious method and is susceptible to errors, because of which not many are kept up to date.
• Instead, take advantage of automation for tracking all commands and web server requests so that you can identify each application and system in the IT infrastructure, including Shadow IT.

Different migration approaches

• Lift and shift
  In this method, systems are moved from their current location to a cloud provider for replicating the architecture or configuration. It is also recognized as “Fork Lifting.”
• VM import export
  This allows the virtual machine images to be imported from the existing available environment to Amazon EC2 instances. VM Import Export is nearly similar to fork lifting, but it requires a VMDK format to migrate.
• Change your application so as to enable it for cloud properties like elasticity and fault-tolerance.
• Reengineering can help you in enabling applications for Cloud.

What should be done in case of data that must remain on-premises for regulatory compliance?

• Look forward to deployment models that will allow you to move to a modern cloud operational model without a necessity to move to a public cloud.
• It is possible for your company to move to private cloud systems or public cloud behind your firewall with cloud at the customer side to get the same set of capabilities as public cloud deployments.

How can you be sure of compatibility between on-premise and cloud deployments?

• Best-in-class, single-vendor engineered systems are architected, incorporated, examined, and optimized to work collectively alongside their cloud counterparts.
• As these structures offer an environment that is identical to the cloud platform, migration is as seamless as possible.

Is there a guarantee of data security?

• There was a time when security was an issue when migrating to the cloud, but now security problems have turned to be yet another factor that’s in favor.
• Protecting your on-premise applications means constantly keeping a track of breaches, software updating, and applying patches.
• Appropriate deployment can assist you in reducing exposure points, hardening infrastructure, and locking down data.

What are the factors that determine the projected cost for each workload migrating to the cloud?

• Knowing the amount of funds required for the migration of each workload before they are actually migrated ensures that companies stay within their budget at every phase of the migration.
• This includes the cost associated with computing, storage, and network, which is required for each workload, along with a scheduled turnoff for the workloads taking advantage of auto-scaling. This analysis helps the customer remove workloads that have been too expensive to migrate during phase 1.

Which applications should move to the cloud first?

• Development and test applications should be moved first because they are less critical and one can power them out when not needed.
• Then, the non-critical business applications should be moved to the cloud.
• Next should be the applications that are heavy in terms of size, like data warehouses.
• After that, companies should move scalable apps and applications resilient in the cloud depending upon their website traffic as well as the nature of the business.
• Finally, the applications permitted by the compliance to be migrated can be moved to the cloud.
• Even though this is the standard sequence of cloud migration that must be followed by most of the organizations, it may also vary according to the company’s use cases.