Cloud is the new buzz in the town and is all set to disrupt the industry ecosystem. As per Gartner, by 2022, the market size and growth of the cloud services industry will be nearly three times the growth of overall IT services. As per Forrester, the public cloud market, including cloud applications (SaaS), development and data platforms (PaaS), and infrastructure (IaaS) services combined, will grow to $299.4 billion in 2020.
Is your organization still in a state of flux on how to leverage this trend? Or, are you among the innovators who are inclined to adopt cloud-first strategies and encash the cloud opportunity? For most of the SMBs experiencing the high operational cost of IT infrastructure and compromised app performance, migration to the cloud environment seems like a lucrative option. With the multitude of benefits such as the pay-as-you-go purchase model, enhanced collaboration with globally distributed teams, robust database backup, seamless implementation of the disaster recovery system, and faster application implementation ”cloud migration is the right mainstream strategy for any evolving business.
But for a cloud newbie, considering to migrate their first workload to the cloud, a little consideration into prerequisites and caution in implementation will ensure that they can maximize cloud investments. A stalled cloud implementation will increase cost, lead to loss of sensitive information and operational disruption.
While the implementation of any new technology is bound to encounter minor glitches, complying with the below-listed recommendations can help in minimizing errors.
1. Assess Prerequisites
As per a study, only less than 40% of firms meet or exceed goals related to migration. As Cloud Migration has a direct impact on operations, a thorough assessment of prerequisites is a critical step. Below is a glimpse of questions that the stakeholders must have an answer to.
- Which cloud computing service model should be deployed?
- Which cloud type is the best fit for your organization’s business model?
- In the case of complete migration, what is the estimated cost of implementation?
- In case of partial migration, which application would remain in-house?
- Is the licensing agreement in consent with your budget and set-up requirements?
Defined prerequisites help in cost assessment, budget-allocation, and selection of a right cloud migration support partner.
2. Document Migration Strategy
When the stakeholders have a clear understanding of the operational-overhaul underpinning the cloud migration, the multi-level strategy required for the execution should be discussed and documented. The migration strategy should explicitly state the sequence, time of transition and the requirements about the re-integration of third-party applications. All these steps need meticulous planning to prevent any operational-disruption, security concerns and performance issues.
3. Determine if Apps Need Refactoring
The applications which are critical but cloud-incompatible require additional investment in refactoring and hence add to the migration cost. Similarly, migrating inefficient legacy applications to cloud leads to the recurring-cost of repair and maintenance. Therefore, if the application is not security-critical or has a complex architecture, and doesn’t require scaling-up in the foreseeable future, it’s always advisable to leave it to in-house IT infrastructure. To sum-up, forcing migration is never a good idea.
4. Request Proof of Concept
While most of the challenges usually surface in the live environment, that is when the entire migration is completed, a Proof of Concept (POC) exercise can help you to easily identify potential vulnerabilities and mitigate business risk. POC is decisive for judging the deftness of the Cloud Migrations Services Provider and upcoming network challenges. A robust POC will enable you to gauge the performance of the migrated app and the functioning of the refactored app.
5. Prepare for Data Security and Accessibility
To keep data intact and accessible during and after migration, stakeholders must dig-in the SOC 2 Report of the cloud provider which demonstrates that the latter has a contingency plan to mitigate risks. Third-party reports from reputed research firms are also available that benchmarks the security measures and service level of all leading service providers.
An issue that is very common when the client is unaware of proprietary standards is vendor lock-in’ where the client is rendered dependent on single cloud technology and can’t migrate to another without substantial cost. Reliable cloud providers establish standard formats and protocols regarding data structures and APIs and offer a heads-up to the client for limitations among cloud-based solutions.
6. Determine Strategy for Switching to Cloud
While it might seem obvious to switch the entire traffic to the cloud stack post-migration of the application to the cloud to validate its optimum functioning. On the contrary, often it is not the only option. The approach depends on the app’s architectural complexity and dependencies. To minimize the business impact, it is suggested to route traffic incrementally and observe if the app is functioning as expected. This approach helps in mitigating drastic issues that could disrupt the business process.
7. Plan for Resource Training
A POC exercise will help in planning for transition ” estimated time required, the probable impact on operations, and training required to adapt to the new IT environment. The leadership should lead the effort and proactively address any concerns from the workforce and invest in training for their optimum functioning in the new environment. For a transition to be successful, the top-management should identify early-adopters and encourage them to coach their peers. Resource training becomes more critical in the scenario where applications are redesigned or replaced.
8. Measure Against Cloud Migration KPIs
The whole process of cloud migration will be futile if there is no quantitative analysis to establish the improvement in application-performance. An exhaustive evaluation plan with well-defined KPIs should be in place and include metrics about user experience, application performance, network throughput, and business engagement.
However, this is only possible when the baseline performance of the application under test-traffic (average and peak) is known for the duration under question.
9. Plan for Management and Governance
Once the cloud migration process has met all the success criteria, the next step is to plan for issues that you don’t know exist. To this end, a solid Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring plan is required. While a dedicated resource for managing and governing the cloud stack might be costly, managed cloud services is a cost-efficient option. As per the Global Managed Services Market 2019 Report by market watch the global managed services market is expected to reach USD 296.38 by 2023, witnessing a CAGR of 11.32%. The upsurge in the demand of the managed services is also a testimony to the fact that many small and medium businesses are now leveraging the operational expertise of managed service providers to gain economies of scale.
These nine recommendations are comprehensive in itself, but several other considerations depend on the existing IT infrastructure and application portfolio. An experienced cloud migration support partner can help you with a better transition strategy customized as per the IT needs/limitations and business goals of the organization. The post-migration creases are easily ironed out if a dedicated migration expert is available to oversee the transition process.
