What is cloud migration?
Cloud migration is the process of moving a company’s digital assets, services, databases, IT resources, and applications either partially, or wholly, into the cloud. Cloud migration is also about moving from one cloud to another.
Companies wishing to move on from outdated and increasingly inefficient legacy infrastructures, such as aging servers or potentially unreliable firewall appliances, or to abandon hardware or software solutions that are no longer operating at optimum capacity, are now turning to the cloud to experience the benefits of cloud computing. This is why so many organizations are, at the very least, making a partial migration to the cloud.
We know that cloud migration is critical for achieving real-time and updated performance and efficiency. As such, the process requires careful analysis, planning and execution to ensure the cloud solution’s compatibility with your business requirements.
What are the Main Benefits of Migrating to the Cloud?
Here are some of the benefits that compel organizations to migrate resources to the public cloud:
- Scalability – cloud computing can scale to support larger workloads and more users, much more easily than on-premises infrastructure. In traditional IT environments, companies had to purchase and set up physical servers, software licenses, storage and network equipment to scale up business services.
- Cost – cloud providers take over maintenance and upgrades, companies migrating to the cloud can spend significantly less on IT operations. They can devote more resources to innovation – developing new products or improving existing products.
- Performance – migrating to the cloud can improve performance and end-user experience. Applications and websites hosted in the cloud can easily scale to serve more users or higher throughput, and can run in geographical locations near to end-users, to reduce network latency.
- Digital experience – users can access cloud services and data from anywhere, whether they are employees or customers. This contributes to digital transformation, enables an improved experience for customers, and provides employees with modern, flexible tools.
What are Common Cloud Migration Challenges?
Cloud migrations can be complex and risky. Here are some of the major challenges facing many organizations as they transition resources to the cloud.
Lack of Strategy
Many organizations start migrating to the cloud without devoting sufficient time and attention to their strategy. Successful cloud adoption and implementation requires rigorous end-to-end cloud migration planning. Each application and dataset may have different requirements and considerations, and may require a different approach to cloud migration. The organization must have a clear business case for each workload it migrates to the cloud.
Cost Management
When migrating to the cloud, many organizations have not set clear KPIs to understand what they plan to spend or save after migration. This makes it difficult to understand if migration was successful, from an economic point of view. In addition, cloud environments are dynamic and costs can change rapidly as new services are adopted and application usage grows.
Vendor Lock-In
Vendor lock-in is a common problem for adopters of cloud technology. Cloud providers offer a large variety of services, but many of them cannot be extended to other cloud platforms. Migrating workloads from one cloud to another is a lengthy and costly process. Many organizations start using cloud services, and later find it difficult to switch providers if the current provider doesn’t suit their requirements.
Data Security and Compliance
One of the major obstacles to cloud migration is data security and compliance. Cloud services use a shared responsibility model, where they take responsibility for securing the infrastructure, and the customer is responsible for securing data and workloads.
So while the cloud provider may provide robust security measures, it is your organization’s responsibility to configure them correctly and ensure that all services and applications have the appropriate security controls.
The migration process itself presents security risks. Transferring large volumes of data, which may be sensitive, and configuring access controls for applications across different environments, creates significant exposure.
Cloud Migration Strategies
Gartner has identified five cloud migration techniques, known as the “5 Rs”. Organizations looking to migrate to the cloud should consider which migration strategy best answers their needs. The following is a brief description of each:
- Rehost. Rehosting, or ‘lift and shift,’ involves using infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). You simply redeploy your existing data and applications on the cloud server. This is easy to do and is thus suited for organizations less familiar with cloud environments. It is also a good option for cases where it is difficult to modify the code, and you want to migrate your applications intact.
- Refactor. Refactoring, or ‘lift, tinker, and shift,’ is when you tweak and optimize your applications for the cloud. In this case, a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) model is employed. The core architecture of the applications remain unchanged, but adjustments are made to enable the better use of cloud-based tools.
- Revise. Revising builds upon the previous strategies, requiring more significant changes to the architecture and code of the systems being moved to the cloud. This is done to enable applications to take full advantage of the services available in the cloud, which may require introducing major code changes. This strategy requires fore planning and advanced knowledge.
- Rebuild. Rebuilding takes the Revise approach even further by discarding the existing code base and replacing it with a new one. This process takes a lot of time and is only considered when companies decide that their existing solutions don’t meet current business needs.
- Replace. Replacing is another solution to the challenges that inform the Rebuild approach. The difference here is that the company doesn’t redevelop its own native application from scratch. This involves migrating to a third-party, prebuilt application provided by the vendor. The only thing that you migrate from your existing application is the data, while everything else about the system is new.
When considering your strategy for migrating to the cloud, it’s important to understand that it’s not just about getting there, it’s also about what you do when you get there. For instance, what are your options for rebuilding applications so they can perform optimally in cloud? The process of cloud migration is making companies ask the question: what is application modernization?
There are many questions to be answered along the way, and businesses of all sizes require assistance in making their cloud journeys. Consequently, many services firms can make a strong case for their lift-and-shift cloud migration capabilities, or their classic modernization services, such as automated language translation and conventional re-platforming.
Ready to migrate to the cloud? Answer these questions
Cloud computing ultimately frees an enterprise IT team from the burden of managing uptime. Placing an application in the cloud is often the most logical step for growth. A positive answer to some or all of these questions may indicate your company’s readiness to move an app to the cloud.
Should your application stay or go? Legacy applications, or workloads that require low latency or higher security and control, probably should stay on premises or move to a private cloud.
What’s the cost to run an application in the cloud? One of the primary benefits of a cloud migration is workload flexibility. If a workload suddenly needs more resources to maintain performance, its cost to run may escalate quickly.
Which cloud model fits best? Public cloud provides scalability through a pay-per-usage model. Private or on-premises cloud provides extra control and security. A hybrid cloud model provides the best of both, although performance and connectivity may suffer.
How do I choose the right cloud provider? The top three cloud providers — AWS, Microsoft and Google — generally offer comparable services to run all kinds of workloads in the cloud, as well as tools to help you efficiently move apps there. Gauge your specific needs for availability, support, security and compliance, and pricing to find the best fit.
Malaysia, Penang, Kuala lumpur, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, Sydney, Melbourne, Japan, Tokyo, Osaka.
Contact us:
eSource Software, 17 01, Kapitan Square, Buckingham Street, 10200 George Town, Penang, Malaysia.
Call Us
(006) 012-4377440
Website www.esource-malaysia.com
Malaysia Cities: Alor Setar, Semporna, Putrajaya, Sandakan, Kuantan, Johor Bahru, kedah, Alor Setar, Perlis, Kuala Terengganu, Kota Bharu, Miri, Kuching, Kota Kinabalu, Ipoh, Perak, Malacca, Negeri Sembilan, Langkawi, George Town, Penang, Pahang, Selangor, Terengganu, Kuala Lumpur, Sabah, Sarawak, Labuan.
THE BEST 50 CITIES FOR A STARTUP IN THE WORLD
- Bucharest, Romania
Cape Town, South Africa
Milan, Italy
Bogota, Colombia
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Budapest, Hungary
Brussels, Belgium
Lyon, France
Lisbon, Portugal
Los Angeles, USA
Frankfurt, Germany
Nice, France
Prague, Czech Republic
Oslo, Norway
Seoul, South Korea
Dublin, Ireland
Reykjavik, Iceland
Vienna, Austria
Sydney, Australia
Shanghai, China
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Santiago, Chile
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Cologne, Germany
Paris, France
Seattle, USA
Barcelona, Spain
Madrid, Spain
Istanbul, Turkey
New York, USA
Tokyo, Japan
Beijing, China
Zurich, Switzerland
Warsaw, Poland
Munich, Germany
Vancouver, Canada
Toronto, Canada
Austin, USA
Singapore, Singapore
Melbourne, Australia
San Francisco, USA
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Copenhagen, Denmark
Boston, USA
London, UK
Bengaluru, India
Stockholm, Sweden
Helsinki, Finland
Tel Aviv, Israel
Berlin, Germany