Develop a Cloud Migration Strategy: 7 Steps to Prepare Your Business
Cloud computing has taken us to the future. As many businesses slowly adopt the cloud, it is evident that the process is lengthy. However, with the right strategy, you will experience tremendous success in moving your business to the cloud.
Source: Forbes
Worry not if you’re unsure of the steps to take for cloud migration, as we have them right below:
Understand cloud migration
It is pointless trying to adopt something that you have meager knowledge of. So, the first step is to learn before you even start sourcing cloud services. Well, for starters, cloud migration entails moving your data center, as a company, to the cloud.
When you decide to modernize your applications through cloud migration, learning beforehand will help you evade mistakes made by others.
Choose a cloud integration level
Do you want a shallow or deep cloud integration? For a superficial cloud integration process, you will not need unique cloud services. Otherwise known as a lift and shift procedure, it involves the moving of applications (as they are) to the cloud, without making changes to the servers in the cloud. On the other hand, a deep cloud integration procedure involves modifying the applications during the migration process.
Besides, you will equally need to choose either a single cloud or a multi-cloud. For an only cloud provider, you will migrate your application in a way that it runs optimized for that specific environment. For a multi-cloud provider, your application will run on multiple cloud providers. The former is simpler because your team only needs to learn one set of cloud APIs. The only downside of working with a specific cloud service provider is vendor lock-in. When you decide to move your application to a different provider, it takes as much effort as the first cloud migration.
Establish the cloud KPIs
Key Performance Indicators, otherwise abbreviated as KPIs, are metrics used to measure the performance of your application or service. The best of these KPIs show you how the progress of your migration is going on. This can mainly be imperative when looking for possible problems within your application or service. Besides, these KPIs can equally help you know when the migration process is completed successfully. Here are some of the basic categories of cloud migration KPIs:
- Business engagement – checks engagement rates, cart adds, conversions, and conversion percentages.
- Infrastructure – checks disk performance, CPU usage, and network throughput and memory usage.
- Component/application performance – checks error rates, availability, and throughput.
- User experience – checks session duration, response time, lags, and the page load time.
Work on performance baselines
Baselining involves measuring the current performance of your applications before the migration process, in a bid to determine its future performance expectations after the migration is complete. Baselines can equally help you to diagnose any problems that may arise after the migration.
Give migration components a priority
During cloud adoption, you need to decide whether or not you will migrate your entire application all at once. You can choose to move everything at once, and can also move component by component.
If you decide to migrate service by service, then prioritizing is of great value. You will need to point out the connections between your services and components. You will equally need to learn which of your services depend on other services. If you are unsure of how to monitor these applications and services or have any doubts about the metrics, you can involve reliable cloud migration consultants such as AnythingCloud. We will also help you discover the components that need to be migrated first, and give you the order to get them migrated effectively.
In most cases, it is advisable to start with services that have the least dependencies. This means that you might have to start with the internal services, then move to the external services. Another approach is to do it the other way around by starting with services closest to your customers (outermost), as this will help you tackle any impact on them earlier on.
Create a data migration plan
AnythingCloud, being a cloud migration expert, can help you formulate the ideal cloud migration plan. This is because the migration of data is perhaps the most critical step of the entire migration process. Data location influences the performance of applications. Thus, you have to ensure that it’s strategic.
Decide the cloud solution to choose
You have the option to pick a private, public, or hybrid cloud solution. A private cloud is on a private network, and are the best when your priority is security. It is the best option when you want to store sensitive data. For a public cloud, the efficiency rate is higher, even though security poses a threat. They are the best for testing application codes and collaborating on different projects. Still, you will need to address security earlier on, so that it doesn’t end up costing you heftily in the future.
Last but not least is the hybrid cloud solution, which is a combination of both the private and public design. With a hybrid solution, you get a chance to operate in the right environment for each need. The only challenge with this model is the tracking of many security infrastructures and managing different platforms.
Our Cloud Migration Experts can help make your cloud migration journey seamless. Rely on us to manage and maximize your cloud platform’s value, so that you can focus more on continuing to grow your business.
