Cloud Migration Journey: How to Navigate a Smooth Transition

Dear LinkedIn Community,

Welcome back to Velvetech’s IT Talks! ??

We’ve come to the point where an enormous part of business operations take place in the cloud — the term that we now often associate with technology, not nature. Yet, for various reasons, many companies are only at the start of transitioning to cloud computing services. And such companies, as we can tell by working with our clients, have a bunch of related concerns.

To help them find the right approach or, at least, address some of the popular doubts, we’ve selected five questions about cloud migration. If you’re, too, on the path of moving data and apps to the cloud, this edition is a good reading choice. So, make a pause for a few minutes and dive in.????

Q1: How do we choose the right migration strategy for our business needs?

There are generally six strategies regarding cloud migration. Among them are rehosting, replatforming, refactoring, retiring, etc.?

Choosing the right one is tricky as you need to factor in many things. Of course, when you have an expert team, you can maximize the benefits of cloud migration while minimizing risks and disruptions. And that’s the first and most obvious answer — engage with professionals.

However, if you’d rather like to see a string of steps, here they are:?

1. Assess your current IT environment. This includes listing all apps and workloads, their dependencies, usage patterns, and importance to business operations. Assess the current performance and evaluate constraints that may impact migration.

2. Define objectives. It can be anything from cost reduction and scalability to supporting innovation. You set the tone.

3. Evaluate migration strategies. As mentioned, there are a few of them, so carefully consider each. For example, rehosting is ideal for quickly moving apps to the cloud with minimal changes, though you can’t expect immediate cloud-native benefits in this case. And refactoring, on the other hand, is good for legacy apps needing significant improvements in scalability, performance, or new functionalities; it requires high effort but maximizes cloud advantages. The list goes on.

Read the case study about Legacy System Migration to the Cloud

4. Perform cost-benefit analysis. At this step, you compare the benefits and costs of each strategy. Take into account migration effort, cloud infrastructure, and ongoing operational costs. The potential ROI is another point to evaluate here.

5. Assemble teams and develop a migration plan. Now, it’s time to ensure your team covers all required roles and is ready to plan and migrate. Cloud architects, DevOps engineers, app developers, and data experts should be part of your league. They will help you develop a phased migration plan with milestones and implement the project.

Q2: What challenges should we expect during the migration process?

Of course, you can’t know for sure all the things to prepare for as it’s just impossible. However, you should always come up with contingency planning prior to starting any project. What are the basic challenges to keep in mind when approaching cloud migration? We can name four.

Technical Challenges

This is probably the most serious chunk of challenges you can face. First, legacy applications may require refactoring or re-architecting to function properly in the cloud environment. Then, data migration can be complicated by issues such as data consistency, integrity, or even volume. Additionally, ensuring compatibility between your on-premises systems and cloud services can also be difficult.

Security and Compliance

No doubt that you know about this one as security and compliance are something all businesses put first. You must ensure that data remains secure throughout the migration process and that cloud infrastructure complies with industry regulations and standards. However, it can be challenging, especially in complex environments with sensitive data.

Cost Management

Unforeseen expenses can arise from factors like data transfer costs, underestimating required resources, or not optimizing cloud usage. Thus, carefully plan and monitor your cloud spending, leveraging cost management tools and strategies to avoid budget overruns.

Downtime and Business Continuity

Anyone wants to avoid disruption to operations and ensure that apps and services remain available and performant throughout the migration process. Planning for potential downtime and preparing for rollback scenarios if issues arise are important steps to mitigate this risk.?

Get inspired by the project on Cloud-to-Cloud Migration

Q3: What are the cost implications of migrating to the cloud?

Migrating to the cloud can offer significant cost benefits but, at the same time, turn out to be a pricy decision. Initial expenses often include fees for data transfer and licensing costs and potentially entail high costs for refactoring or re-architecting apps to be cloud-ready.?

Additionally, you might need to train staff or employ cloud migration experts as well as invest in tools and technologies to facilitate the migration process. So, it’s no wonder that these upfront investments, which are crucial for a smooth transition, can add up quickly and impact the overall budget.

The story doesn’t end once you’re done with moving to the cloud. Next, the ongoing costs will become a critical focus for you. In particular, continuous monitoring and optimization of cloud usage are essential to avoid extra expenses. Costs related to data storage, compute resources, and network bandwidth can fluctuate based on usage patterns.?

Plus, there may be hidden costs, such as fees for data egress or underutilized resources. Thus, you need to implement robust cloud cost management practices. Which? For example, rightsizing resources, leveraging reserved instances, and using cost management tools.

Q4: How can we synchronize data between on-prem systems and cloud services?

There are several ways to ensure your data remains consistent and up-to-date across both on-premises systems and cloud services. Let’s briefly overview some of them.

??Data Replication Tools

One of the options is to use data replication tools that continuously copy data from on-prem systems to the cloud in real time or at scheduled intervals. Among them are AWS Database Migration Service, Azure Data Factory, and Google Cloud Dataflow.

??Hybrid Cloud Solutions

You can also implement hybrid cloud solutions that allow data to be stored and processed across both on-premises and cloud environments. These solutions often include built-in synchronization features to ensure data consistency.

??APIs and Integration Middleware

Another way to facilitate data exchange between your systems is by leveraging APIs and integration middleware. Custom solutions or ready-made platforms like Apache Kafka, MuleSoft, and IBM Integration Bus can help manage data flow and changes.

??Batch Processing

If you work with less time-sensitive data, you can choose batch processing to transfer data at specific intervals. This approach can be managed using ETL tools that many cloud providers have today.

??Database Synchronization Services

The last method we want to highlight is the use of database synchronization services. As you can tell by the name, they offer tools and features for keeping databases in sync. For instance, AWS RDS provides read replicas and replication capabilities that can synchronize with on-prem databases.

Q5: How do we manage dependencies and updates for third-party integrations?

If you have some third-party integrations in your cloud environment as many businesses do, you should incorporate cloud-specific tools and practices to efficiently manage dependencies and updates for them.

To start with, there are cloud service monitoring tools that can help you track the performance and health of third-party services integrated with your cloud applications. To name a few, AWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, and Google Cloud Operations.

You probably heard about CI/CD pipeline development as a practice to automate your app deployment. Well, this is also a good way to automate the testing and deployment of updates for third-party services your app is integrated with. Consider tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI, or cloud-native CI/CD services.

Then, we have API management platforms, such as AWS API Gateway, Azure API Management, or Apigee. These solutions help in version control, tracking changes, and managing API integrations in general.

What else? If you need to handle microservices communication, think about a service mesh. It can simplify the management of dependencies and updates across distributed cloud environments.?

Finally, configuration management tools like Terraform or AWS CloudFormation will help you manage and version control the infrastructure and dependencies, ensuring consistent and repeatable deployments.???

Read more about Cloud Integration Nuances

Move to the Cloud with Ease

If you decide to grip all the opportunities the cloud provides and not allow its advantages to pass you by, develop a robust cloud migration strategy. There are various approaches and tools to help you with it, but at the same time, there are some challenges that can potentially interfere with the success of your endeavor.??

To mitigate the risks and ensure the process of migrating your apps and resources goes as planned, engage a team of cloud experts. They will provide guidance, best practices, and hands-on support throughout the migration journey. And what will you do? You will reap all the benefits, of course. ????