A Successful Cloud Migration Requires a Solid Cloud Strategy
Cloud computing is a significant part of today’s business ecosystem, with an estimated 80% of enterprises using a hybrid cloud model, according to Flexera’s State of the Cloud 2021 report. Amazon AWS is the market leader, owning 45% of the enterprise cloud market. Although it’s hard to deny the business benefits of cloud migration, it’s equally important to discuss the related challenges and need for a solid cloud migration strategy and plan.
Jumping into cloud migration without a set plan is a common mistake many businesses make. Without an explicit cloud migration strategy and plan that can be mapped back to clear objectives, your business and technical paths will be fraught with problems. You also may not know your needs and how to achieve them without a set strategy. For the most success, you should set goals and communicate them to stakeholders before beginning the migration journey.
Setting up a cloud migration strategy and plan is so important that both Azure Cloud Adoption Framework and AWS Cloud Adoption Framework specifically call it out. Not having a cloud migration plan will dramatically affect the number of problems and likely not deliver the best possible results. There can be a vast chasm of differences between building an application for the cloud versus on-premises. Similarly, that same chasm can exist for the operations team to get all the configurations, settings, logging, communications, and security right.
Let’s talk about some of the challenges of moving to the cloud you may encounter.
Challenges of Migrating to the Cloud
Migrating an application to the cloud is more complex than turning the new cloud application on and turning off the on-premises one. The “switch” takes proper planning, coordination, and testing. Not doing so can lead to unacceptable levels of downtime — over 60% of outages cost more than $100,000, while 15% of them cost in excess of $1 million, according to Uptime Institute’s 2022 Outage Analysis Report.
Having no business strategy and no measure of success leads to many different difficulties, such as cost management problems like cost overruns and cloud sprawl. Instead, you should properly assess and estimate the true cost of the cloud for your applications. Your bills can be more than expected due to two main factors:
1. Subscribing to the wrong level.
Most cloud services have different levels of service and features that you can subscribe to, such as premium vs. standard. One of the crucial decisions you’ll make is choosing between a premium versus a standard level of service. While premium can mean many more features and capabilities, they may not be capabilities you need or would even use for that larger price tag. One of the biggest challenges of moving to the cloud is overestimating how much storage or Virtual Machine (VM) processing power you need.
You don’t often do 1:1 mapping from on-premises servers to cloud VM size. If you’re running a 4-CPU server with 32GB of memory, that doesn’t mean you need the same VM size in your cloud. It’s a different model, so you’ll want to “right size” every aspect of your cloud.
Without a well-coordinated effort, it’s easy to end up with too many resources being created and configured. At a bare minimum, there’s likely a more efficient way to do it when you’re stretching to fit a tool into your arsenal. You don’t need too many VMs or more space than you actually use. If you need more later, you can always scale it appropriately.
2. Maintaining security.
You can’t read a tech publication without a reference to cybersecurity.
Moving to the cloud doesn’t mean you can slack on security. How you approach, configure, monitor, and respond to security in the cloud can be confusing if you don’t come prepared. Core basics like having a firewall or using IDS/IPS can be the same, but their implementation, configuration, and structure can be very different. Your cloud migration plan should find and address these issues early, whether they’re in the applications or their dependencies. That means you need the right specializations in cloud migration security to do it right.
If your cloud migration strategy accounts for these challenges, you are better set to reap the benefits of cloud migration.
Business Benefits of Cloud Migration
There are numerous benefits of migrating to the cloud. It can be automated to match and enforce corporate security policies while monitoring all resources for performance metrics, logs, telemetry, and more. These features can provide immediate feedback, which keeps you aligned with the effects of changes so you can address potential problems before they interrupt business.
Here are three steps you need to take before enjoying all of the benefits cloud migration has to offer:
1. Establish business drivers.
One of the core components of your cloud migration strategies will be your goals and how you measure success. This sets a constant measuring stick to track progress, and you risk wasting resources without these measurements. . Lacking these drivers can also affect the morale of those involved in the project.
2. Know your applications and vendors.
Knowing your applications and existing resources in depth can help you make better decisions. It will also factor into the structure of your cloud migration plan to achieve your goals. From there, you need to choose a vendor. Because major cloud vendors have many comparable offerings, you must consider each vendor’s strengths and weaknesses, including planning for long-term needs.
3. Prioritize readiness.
Before beginning any cloud migration, you need to prepare your people. Know what priority skills need to be developed ahead of time and work with your teams to provide training and any other required resources. Lacking any of these resources will lead to cloud migration challenges.
Most of all, don’t be afraid to ask for help. The most underrated business benefit of cloud migration is access to outside resources. The cloud involves an entire ecosystem of experts who can help support your applications and use cases. This mutually beneficial community is one of the forces driving many enterprises to migrate to the cloud.
If you successfully navigate the process — alone or with a partner — you’ll enjoy cloud migration benefits like an easier time scaling to meet business needs. You can even use this updated environment to test new ideas or adjust to seasonal fluctuations with added speed and security. When you’re ready to move to the cloud, make sure your needs and intention are set. After all, a strategic move is a successful one.