How do you transition your legacy systems to the cloud?

1 Assess your current systems

Before you start planning your migration, you need to understand your current systems and their dependencies, performance, functionality, and compatibility. You can use various tools and methods to conduct an inventory and analysis of your legacy systems, such as code scanning, application discovery, dependency mapping, and business process modeling. This will help you identify which systems are suitable for migration, which ones need to be modernized or replaced, and which ones can be retired or decommissioned.

2 Choose your migration strategy

Once you have assessed your current systems, you need to decide how you want to migrate them to the cloud. Depending on your goals, resources, and constraints, there are various migration strategies to choose from. Rehosting is the simplest and fastest way to move your legacy systems to the cloud, but it may not optimize them for the cloud environment. Replatforming involves making minor changes to your legacy systems, such as changing the operating system, database, or middleware, which can improve performance and scalability. Refactoring re-architects your legacy systems to use cloud-native services, enhancing functionality and security. Replacing your legacy systems with new ones designed for the cloud or off-the-shelf solutions can reduce technical debt and maintenance costs. Retaining some of your legacy systems on-premises or in a hybrid cloud model can reduce risk and complexity; however, it may also limit your cloud benefits and create silos.

3 Plan your migration project

Once you have chosen your migration strategy, you need to plan your migration project in detail, including the scope, timeline, budget, resources, roles, and responsibilities. Additionally, you should define your migration goals and metrics, such as performance, availability, reliability, security, and cost. Furthermore, when planning your migration project you must take into account data transfer and transformation from legacy systems to the cloud. You should also consider a testing strategy and framework that covers the functional, non-functional, and user acceptance testing of your migrated systems. Security risks and requirements must be assessed for the migrated systems as well as the security policies and controls of your cloud provider. Encryption, authentication, authorization, monitoring, and auditing measures should be implemented to protect data and systems in the cloud. Finally, a governance model should be defined with processes that guide the migration project such as decision-making protocols and communication protocols. This project should align with your business strategy and objectives as well as any regulatory or legal frameworks that apply to your industry or region.

4 Execute your migration project

Once you have planned your migration project, you need to execute it according to your strategy and schedule. You can use various tools and services to automate and streamline your migration process, such as cloud migration platforms, migration agents, migration factories, or migration partners. To ensure a successful migration, it's best to start small and scale up, monitoring and troubleshooting as needed. Optimization and improvement should also be done continuously, leveraging the cloud capabilities and services to enhance performance, scalability, functionality, and security. Additionally, you should update your documentation and training materials to reflect your migrated systems. Finally, a backup and restore plan should be in place in case you need to revert to your legacy systems.

5 Manage your cloud environment

After you have completed your migration project, you need to manage your cloud environment effectively, using the cloud management tools and services that are available. Cost management and optimization tools should be used to track and optimize cloud spending, while performance management and optimization tools should be used to measure and improve cloud performance. Security management and optimization tools should be used to maintain and enhance cloud security, while exploring new cloud features and services, as well as emerging cloud trends and technologies, is important for innovation. Additionally, cloud development and testing tools can be used to experiment and innovate with cloud solutions. It's also important to review cloud pricing and billing models, as well as security policies and controls, to ensure they match usage and comply with standards.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?