Today businesses are relying on the cloud to run cost-effective applications. The global cloud computing market is projected to reach 383.4 billion US dollars by 2020. As the market expands, it’s going to become cheaper and more efficient to run applications on the cloud. So businesses of all sizes should consider cloud migration for their current applications and services.However, the task of cloud migration can be overwhelming. Depending on whether your applications are monolithic or modular, the complexity of your migration can vary widely.Here are some things to consider to make your cloud migration journey easier:
Evaluate Your Systems for OpportunityBefore even considering a cloud migration strategy, you need to evaluate if the cloud is right for you. You need to look at the current applications and figure out if they will fit in the cloud environment. You might find that certain applications will benefit more from cloud migration. Look at the return on investment on each application and decide what you want to move.
Determine the Benefits for Your BusinessDuring your evaluation process, you should also figure out the reasons for migrating to the cloud. Every business is different, so your business objectives will determine why you should move to the cloud. Here are some valid reasons:
- Cost Savings – Establishing your own infrastructure and datacenter takes time and money. You have to invest upfront. Compared to that you can get started on the cloud at lower costs. Also, due to the elasticity of the cloud, you can expand and contract your resource usage. Thus, you can save more money.
- Flexibility – The cloud provides more flexibility in terms of resources and options. You don’t have to get stuck with a certain operating system or database. You can easily change your technology stack.
- Scalability – Most businesses use the cloud for scalability. If you create your datacenter, you always have to plan ahead to make sure you have enough resources to grow. It’s difficult to be agile. On the cloud, you can start up or shut down instances of new resources on demand. So infrastructure limitations is no longer a problem for growth.
- Redundancy – The cloud provides an easier way to create redundancy. You can have servers in multiple locations to serve customers worldwide. Also, you don’t have to build infrastructure to back up your data because the cloud can do it for you.
Determine Your Cloud Migration Strategy and ToolsYou can move applications in various ways. Here are some ways to do it:
- Change Hosts – You can take your current applications and host it on new servers on the cloud. It means you wouldn’t have to redo the architecture. You only have to consider the migration to new servers.
- Change Platforms – You might find that the cloud offers better database services like Amazon RDS or Microsoft Azure SQL Database. So it might be worth updating your application architecture to change platforms.
- Change Solutions – You can also benefit from changing your whole application to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution. For example, you can move your customer relationship management (CRM) application from on-premise to SalesForce’s cloud-based offering.
- Redo Your Applications – In certain cases, you might find that rearchitecting your application to use cloud-native services can help you save time and money for your cloud migration.
- Find Cloud Providers – You can use a single cloud provider or use multiple cloud providers. The choice of the providers will depend on your application requirements.
Also, find out what migration tools or services your cloud provider has available. For example, AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure have their own migration services. These services can provide:
- Discovery Tools
- Migration Tracking
- Database Migration
- Data Migration
- Project Management
The tools can be an invaluable resource to make your move to the cloud easier.
Planning Your Cloud MigrationOnce you have decided on a strategy and you are ready to move forward, it’s important to plan out the migration process. No plan is going to be full-proof. But the more you plan out the steps, the easier it will be to handle any unexpected events. You should automate the migration tasks as much as possible to keep your resources available to handle the issues. Planning will help you prevent common mistakes. But every cloud migration creates its unique set of problems. So it’s important to validate the data you migrate. Use automated tests to determine the integrity of the data after the move.
Post-Migration MonitoringYou also need to monitor the performance of your applications after the cloud migration. Validation tests might find immediate problems, but you can only determine some problems after a significant amount of time has passed in the new environment.
In ConclusionThe complexity of a cloud migration will depend a lot on the size of your operation. However, taking a strategic approach can make your cloud migration easier.
