HOW TO MASTER CLOUD MIGRATION IN 30 DAYS
For some businesses, migrating to the cloud in 3-6 months is not an option. If you’re looking to move to the cloud but you don’t have so much time on your hands to spend on cloud migration, you can still make the transition in a timely fashion – in 30 days to be precise. Here’s how to master cloud migration in just four weeks.
Phase 1: Prepare
Preparation isn’t just the first step but also the most critical part of any cloud migration project. In this phase, you need to do the following:
- Determine why you want to move to the cloud: Will moving to the cloud offer any advantages to your business?
- Evaluate your migration costs: Although the cloud offers a wide range of benefits including cost-savings, it requires upfront investments. You need to establish that your organization is ready to make the move.
- Get your staff onboard: Cloud migration will require the cooperation of everyone on your team. So make sure they’re on the same page with you on the switch and they’re ready to adapt to new changes.
- Choose your cloud environment and partner: Decide on which way to go between single and multi-cloud environments. Also, choose a strong cloud partner with experience in your industry and with success in working with businesses of your size.
Phase 2: Assess
Before you make your plan and commence execution, it is vital to know the state of your business and your IT infrastructure. Here are a few things to do:
- Analyze the environment: Assess your existing IT infrastructure so you can gain a deeper understanding of how your applications depend and interact with each other.
- Assess your workloads: It’s important to evaluate your workloads so you can categorize them into different groups based on criticality, difficulty and performance.
- Determine the apps to migrate: Decide on the apps that need to go to the cloud and in what sequence you want to move them.
- Creating cloud foundation and operating model design: A foundation comprises landing zones, which are a set of secured cloud infrastructure with built-in policies, guidelines and centrally managed services. The operating model refers to the framework for putting core elements together.
Phase 3: Migrate
The two phases above lead to the actual migration process. Here are a few things to do:
- Cloud foundation and operating model implementation: This step involves setting up landing zones including accounts, VPC, network connectivity, IAM Roles, policies and deployed workflow. Follow it up with a roll out of subsequent processes for seamless integrations with current systems.
- Initial migration: Move the first set of apps to the cloud. This stage is typically a morale booster and it can help you understand the portfolio.
Phase 4: Scale
After the success of the initial migration, it’s time to increase the rate of migrations while keeping tabs on security and costs.
- Large scale migrations: Leverage on the migration factor model to carry out large scale migrations.
- Operating model optimization: At this stage, it is very easy for things to go south, so make sure you keep an eye on costs so you can optimize policies, processes and monitoring when necessary.
- Hybrid cloud model optimization: During the large scale migrations, it’s vital to ensure that both on-premises and cloud models are properly managed while the cloud model is being optimized.
- Testing: Carry out testing at every point during the entire process. Continually test for security and performance.
Conclusion
Many enterprises are torn between the promise of digital transformation through the cloud and the realities of legacy technologies, especially since cloud migration can take such a long time to complete successfully. By following the steps above, you can master cloud migration in 30 days.
