Cloud Migration

Cloud migration is a method of migrating or moving your data, and applications onto the cloud. But the question is why do we need to migrate? Well, the reasons are mixed i.e. economical, business or it might be technological.

Cloud Migration

1. Why do we Need Cloud Migration?
2. Cloud Migration Process
3. Cloud Migration Tools
4. Benefits of Cloud Migration

Why do we Need Cloud Migration?

Well before the cloud came into existence the companies used to store all their data and software onto the company’s hard disk or the server. Now more the company is bigger more space it will require to store its stuff.

Well storing data in such a way is not scalable when it comes to speed. Consider that if suddenly the number of requests to your data increases it would definitely lead to a server crash.

So, in the process, we need flexible storage for our data and software. This flexible storage is cloud. The cloud not only provides the storage but also infrastructure, platform and software as a service. Cloud has not only benefitted the business, but it has also impacted our lives as individuals as well.

Almost all the applications that we use in our day-to-day life such as social media platforms, bank apps, and OTT apps are hosted by cloud services. You can always access these apps using an internet connection.

So migrating your data and software onto the cloud make it available to everyone and from anywhere.

Cloud Migration Process

Migration of data or applications from the local on-premises data centre onto the cloud is performed in phases or stages. Although migration is always considered difficult and a vague process and is always left as a job of industry practitioners.

The migration process is conducted in four stages:

1. Cloud Migration Planning
2. Migration Business Case
3. Could Data Migration Execution
4. Ongoing Upkeep

Cloud Migration Planning

First, you have to determine the use case that the public cloud is going to serve. The factors that the client must consider are:

• Dost the hos provides disaster recovery?
• Does the host provide DevOps?
• Will the hybrid approach work best for deploying the cloud?
• Does hosting enterprise workloads by completely shifting to the cloud?

Figure out the factors that are going to control the process of migration like:

• Critical application data
• Legacy data
• Application interoperability

You even have to assess your data and find out whether:

• You have data that needs to be resynchronized regularly.
• You have practised data compliance or not.
• You have some non-critical data that can be migrated in the first few rounds of the migration.

All of these assessments will help you in planning the data migration. During planning, you must figure out what tools you are going to require for migration, whether you need the encryption service for your data, how much of your data needs to be migrated etc.

Migration Business Case

Identify your business requirement and then review the services offered by the cloud service provider. Further, you have to identify the benefit of migrating to the cloud such as:

• Cost-saving
• Operational benefits
• Architectural improvements

Create a business case that provides a total cost of ownership (TOC) for each application or data you are planning to migrate. To compute TOC, you can use the cloud calculators that calculate the cost on the basis of computing resources used, operating system used, network requirements, type and the amount of storage required etc.

Now sit with the cloud service provider, provide him with your requirements and discuss some cost-saving options. The cloud service provider will offer some plans with different costs. You can even ask for a discount.

Execute Data Migration

Now when done with the environmental assessment and planning about what has to be done, the time is for executing the plan of migration. The challenges that you face while executing migration are:

• Migration must cost minimal disruption.
• Conduct migration at the lowest cost.
• Migration must be conducted in the shortest time period.

Ensure that your data is accessible while migration, if not it might affect your business. So, whatever data or application that you have migrated must be able to work out in the new cloud environment.

Ongoing keep Up

The data migrated onto the cloud must be optimized, and secure and it must be easily accessible.

Cloud Migration Tools

If you are making up your mind to migrate onto the cloud then you must be aware of some of the famous cloud migrating tools.

• AWS Migration Services
• Carbonite Migrate
• Google Migration Service
• Turbonomic
• Cloud Health technologies
• Cloudflare
• Akamai
• Cloud Scape
• CloudEndure’s
• Cloudfront
• EdgeCast

Benefits of Cloud Migration

• Migrating to the cloud makes your infrastructure scalable as it allows you to increase or decrease your resources according to your requirement.
• Migrating to the cloud reduces your expenditure on resources as the cloud prevent us from purchasing expensive system. Thus, migrating to the cloud is cost-effective.
• Migrating all your data and software onto the cloud allow your employees to work remotely as they can access their projects remotely.
• Cloud service also backup and recovery solutions which save your expenditure on backup and recovery solutions.
• Migrating to the cloud even saves the cost of hiring maintenance services.
• Cloud services provide you with zero risk of failure as and offer a smooth performance even in disaster.

In this way migrating to the cloud is often a good solution for large and complex companies. However, there are some challenges while migrating to the cloud that we will discuss in our future content.