A Look at Cloud Migration

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What is cloud migration

Businesses often have volatile bandwidth demands, such as fluctuating workloads and customer demands. Building your business in the cloud, allows you to upscale or downscale your fluctuating capacity.

The cloud is a series of servers that can be accessed over the Internet. It is also the software and databases that run on those servers. Cloud migration is when some or all of the data centre capabilities of a company is moved into these infrastructure.

Benefit of cloud migration

The reasons that organisations are drawn to cloud migration are because of the:

1. Scalability: It can easily be scaled up for larger workloads and users than on premise infrastructure.
2. Security: The cloud can be more secure than traditional systems when done right.
3. Cost: The cost is reduced because cloud providers take over maintenance and upgrades.
4. Integration: Moving to the cloud allows your business to connect its systems together seamlessly improving efficiency of all services.
5. Access: With all the data being in the cloud it can always be accessed no matter what happens to the physical machines.
6. Performance: Migrating to the cloud can lead to improved performance and end-user experience.
7. Digital experience: Access to cloud services and data can be given to users from anywhere even if they are employees or customers.

Challenges of cloud migration

Even with all the benefits of cloud migration there are challenges such as:

1. Lack of strategy: Many organisations start migrating without the necessary time and attention needed for their strategy.
2. Cost management: Many organisations do not understand what they need to plan to spend or save after migration.
3. Vendor lock-in: Migrating workloads from one cloud to another is lengthy and costly which can lead to being left with a single insufficient vendor.
4. Data security and compliance: Even though the cloud provider provides security measures it is the organisation’s responsibility to configure them correctly.

Cloud migration strategy

There are several ways for an organisation to implement cloud migration called the 7 Rs:

1. Refactor: This is when you optimise your applications for the cloud.
2. Rehost: This is taking your existing data and application and placing it on the cloud.
3. Replatform: This is taking your existing data and optimising it to take advantage of the cloud.
4. Rebuild: This is discarding the existing code base and replacing it with a new one.
5. Replace: This is migrating to a third-party, prebuilt application provided by a cloud vendor.
6. Repurchase: This is switching to a different product usually going from a traditional license to a SaaS model.
7. Retire: This is removing applications that are no longer needed in your source environment.

Cloud migration is something that businesses do because the cloud is now vital to achieving end-to-end digital transformation. The cloud is now vital to help businesses reopen, reinvent, and outmaneuver uncertainty.