Cloud Migration A Complete Guide

from Planning to Execution |

SurfCloudTech
Posted by Vishal Singh

With the introduction of Cloud Computing, Information and Technology expectations of

small as well as the medium business have raised beyond measure. Before
understanding what is cloud migration and its seven steps-model of migrating to cloud,
it is very important to understand the five Ws that are related to cloud migration.

Why migrate to the cloud?

What to Migrate?
When to Migrate?
What is Cloud Migration and what are the steps for it?
Who to ask for help?

If you are running a small business or company, these are the basic questions which
must be considered before cloud migration and most important what is your strategy
for migration.

Cloud computing is the most disruptive model of technology which has been a hotly
debated and discussed topics among all the other professionals and IT researchers both
in the field of industry and academia. The innovation in the field of the cloud is part
technology and part business model which is in shortly said as a disruptive techno-
commercial model.

The innovation in the field of the cloud is part technology and part business model
which is in shortly said as a disruptive techno-commercial model. Whereas there are
also risks of cloud migration which cannot be ignored.

Most of the enterprises today are using the power of cloud computing to solve their
problems and these enterprises are powered by captive data centers. For small as well
as medium businesses and enterprises, IT is the backbone of all their operations.

Data centers are distributed across various geographies. In order to meet the
requirements of clients and varying loads, most of the data centers are provisioned with
the capacity beyond the average peak loads that is experienced by data centers.
If ant enterprise is seasonal or having a cylindrical business, that there are chances that
load variation would be significant. As we know that computing power can be increased
to its full potential and due to this, it is observed that many data center management
teams have been innovating and trying hard to innovate all of their management
practices and also technology deployed to squeeze out the last possible usable
computing resource with the help of appropriate programming, SLAs, system
configurations and management of the systems.

In this article, we will be covering some of the important questions like When and how
to migrate ones application to the cloud; What components of your IT company need
to be migrated to the cloud and what not to migrate and who are the customers which
are mostly benefited from your migration.

On one hand, there are large IT vendors like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, who are
offering various cloud computing services and on the other hand, there has been
several entrepreneurial efforts to migrate and leverage the cloud given myriad
challenges, issues, benefits, and limitations with lack of comprehensive understanding
the scope of cloud computing and what cloud computing can actually do.

The question here arises is why company giants are shifting towards providing services
and using this techno-commercial disruptive model for business. This is because it is
giving a greater return on Investment (ROI) than any other traditional IT investment for
a small or large scale business.

The cloud vendors were facing many issues of distributes systems as well as business
models and also had many problems that indicated that it still takes time to fully mature
cloud computing services

Before migration, it is very important to understand the benefits, risks, cost and factors
like organizational and social cultural must be dually considered. So far much research
has been made in cloud migration methods mainly how to efficiently migrate your
legacy system to the cloud platform.

Until now, many innovative methods have been introduced and related tools have been
developed by organizations in migrating legacy system to cloud computing. Before
thinking of migrating to the cloud there should be clear migration strategy and need to
shift the resources and services.

We have to thing on both the perspectives i.e how clients will be benefited by this
massive change and second how team members will make this change possible. For
some small scale companies, the idea of shifting their services to the cloud was a
complete loss as these companies were not having engineers and experts to understand
the functioning of this complex model.
 Contents [hide]
1 Why is Cloud Migration better? The Promise of Cloud Computing Services
2 Why Migrate ??
o
2.0.1 Flexibility
2.0.2 Disaster Recovery
2.0.3 Automatic Software Updates
2.0.4 Mitigate the Risk of Downtime
2.0.5 Increased Collaboration
2.0.6 Work From Anywhere
2.0.7 Capital-Expenditure Free
2.0.8 Document Control
2.0.9 Security
2.0.10 Competitiveness
2.0.11 Faster and Cheaper Access to Advanced Features
3 What to migrate??
4 When to Migrate
o
4.0.1 Personal Management
4.0.2 Return on Investment
4.0.3 Legal Requirements
4.0.3.1 Application Management
5 Where to Migrate?
o
5.0.1 Type of Cloud Services (SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS)
5.0.2 Local Cloud Provider or Global Cloud Provider
6 Who to ask for Help and Advice??
7 Cloud Migration Assessment Model
8 So Whats Your Cloud Migration Strategy
o
8.0.1 Share this:
8.0.2 Related

Why is Cloud Migration better? The

Promise of Cloud Computing Services
Cloud migration is always been a better solution for companies as you dont have to
bother about the complexities of the underlying systems and complex functioning of the
systems. Also if you consider buying resources like server machines and technicians to
setup your own cloud and also this method can be more time consuming.

It is better as cloud computing turned attractive to most of the IT companies as they

could pass on the additional demand from their information technology setups onto the
 cloud and also they have to only pay for the usage and along with that they dont have
to worry anything about operations and management.

Companies are mostly impressed by uniformity, simplicity and ease of services

abstractions. In small and medium enterprises, use of additional information technology
needs has saved a substantial amount of economic savings. You must have read some
of the stories about cloud migration in ppts, pdfs and also in newspaper articles.

For IT managers and technology architects, cloudonomics has become a topic of deep
interest. You can read these points to get insights of why cloud migration can be better
for your business/company and the promise of cloud computing services.

Pay Per Use Lower Cost Barriers.

On Demand Resources.
Attractive NFR Support.
SLA drove Operations.
Infinite Elastic Availability.
Automatic metering and usage monitoring.
For hybrid operations, integration and interoperability support.
Abstract IT features and also encapsulate them.

These are some of the features and promises of cloud computing services both on the
technology and business front.

Till now you must be clear somewhat about what cloud migration is in simple words
and also why cloud migration is a better option for your business. The question here
arises is why to migrate. Why cloud migration is better for my business and most
important why some of the companies still hesitate to migrate to the cloud platform.

We will be discussing every question detail and as and IT expert and researching cloud
computing from last 10 years, I will be sharing all the pros and cons of migration along
with how to migrate your application and services to the cloud.

But before all that the most important is to understand why are company giants shifting
to cloud-based systems and some are not.

Why Migrate ??
There are many economic as well as business goals of cloud migration which must be
considered before migrating and you will understand why any enterprise application is
migrating into the cloud platform.
There are many technical reasons behind migrating and the most important reason is
that many organizations are looking today for different ways to cut their costs and at
the same time bringing greater business agility.

All these companies see cloud services is the best and most efficient way to accomplish
their goals faster with accuracy. The question here arises is that agility and cost are the
only reason of shifting, the answer is simply NO.

Let me explain the importance of migration with this simple example. Let us consider
tow of the most popular countries of the world India and China. On one hand, India has
15.1 percentage of total internet users and on another hand, China has 22 percent of
total internet users. China is the country with most number of internet users with more
than 642 million in the year of 2014.

In India, many of the citizens are just getting access to the internet only through the
use of mobile devices. This is an opportunity for many of the companies as this number
represents an enormous updated market opportunity for small scale businesses.

Now lets consider the growth of mobile devices in developing countries like India and
adoption of mobile applications. Mobile applications have eased our work in terms of
performance, scalability, and availability.

Also Read: Cloud Migration Checklist

The most important thing is global availability with the ability to go viral for most of the
mobile applications. Mobile applications solutions need to handle spikes in traffic at the
same time. The question here arises is will these applications will be able to perform
well in the fast-growing segments of internet enabled population.

Now you must be understanding some of the factors for migration i.e cost and agility.
To build a powerful resilient application to deliver security and good performance across
the globe, an organization will be needing a fully setup data center and with that
engaging with several data center providers all across the globe. What is dually needed
is automatically scaling the computing power whenever the demand increases, also
know as auto-scaling.

All these combinations result in exorbitant cost on both time as well as money. The
second option is that we can contact public cloud service providers as they offer all
these services and capabilities at a very low cost. These providers offer high levels of
customer self-service with the support of auto-scaling natively within their product
when there is a requirement to handle a spike in need as well as demand.
The another advantage of shifting is that these companies offer a global service
footprint which allows organizations to deploy their resources all across geographies.

The key to migrating is agility. With the discovery of new technologies, enterprises can
quickly create and launch new technologies and services in the public cloud. And if the
new service/product doesnt work well, they can easily bring it down.

With the advancement in technology, we have summarized some reasons why

companies are shifting to cloud-based services these are:

Flexibility

It is one of the major factors as if your need increases with the demand from the
customers or users, it is easy to scale up your cloud storage and services and other
requirements. Likewise, if you are requiring to scale down again, the flexibility is
available on demand. As the cloud is known as on-demand service, its in our hand
when we require and when we need to scale our resources. This agility can give a great
level of advantage over competitors.

Disaster Recovery

Small as well as large-scale businesses must be investing in robust disaster recovery as

well as fluctuating bandwidth demands. But for small enterprises, they lack the required
cash as well as expertise. The small businesses have twice the backup and recovery
solutions than that of big companies. Service providers keep the data recovery of their
clients if any disaster occurs or any technical problems occur in servers or data centers.

Automatic Software Updates

The beauty of cloud computing is that the servers and data centers are off-premise and
out of sight. Suppliers dually take care of all the updates and technical problems. All
software are automatically updated and you dont have to waste your precious time in
managing and maintaining the system yourself. All you need to focus is on things that
matter the most growing your business according to your plan.

Mitigate the Risk of Downtime

With the use of on-premise systems, you will be getting little or no flexible access and
on another hand, cloud-based systems enable secure access through any device. Most
of the companies offer 99.99% uptime than mitigating the risk of downtime. Inclement
weather, local power outages can easily be avoided.
Increased Collaboration

The best thing for your team members is they can access, edit, and share meaningful
resources like documents, ppts, pdf, videos, books, and business case studies anytime
from anywhere. Cloud based workflow and files sharing applications make them do
updates in real time along with giving visibility of their collaborations.

Also Read: Benefits of Cloud Migration for Small and Medium Size Business

Work From Anywhere

All you need is an internet connection and all your work is in your hands. With the
introduction of applications now you are also not restricted by which device you have
got to hand. With the increase in flexibility, employees can enjoy the work-life balance
that suits them.

These are some of the advantages and benefits which you will be getting when moving
or migrating to the cloud.

Capital-Expenditure Free

Hardware costs are directly cut when you are shifting to the computing environment.
You simply pay as per your usage and enjoy a subscription-based model. Its easier to
first look at the first step to cloud adaptation.

Document Control

With the increase in manpower, more employees and partners collaborate on

documents. Thus more is the need of document control and security. Before the
introduction of cloud, files need to be sent through email back and forth and the
drawback of this is that only one user can access the document at a single time. Sooner
or later you end up conflicting and making a mess on formats, documents, and files.

But with cloud platform and applications, even the small companies become global and
eventually increase the competition and complications as people are from different
global locations and speak different languages. According to the survey, 73% of
knowledge workers collaborate with those people who belong to different time zones
and regions.

When you are shifting to the cloud-based platform. all files are stored centrally and
anyone can access these files anytime and along with that everyone sees the one
version of the truth at the same time. Greater visibility of documents and files means
more collaboration with eventually means better work with the healthier bottom line.

Security

You must have read some stories in magazines and papers that lost how the company
is affected by the loss of physical resources and physical damages to the machines, also
lost laptops are of billion dollar losses to the companies. This is because of sensitive
data inside the laptops and other machines that are damaged due to human mistakes
or any natural disaster.

Cloud computing gives greater security from these risks when it happens. As all your
important data is stored on the cloud, you can access it any time no matter what
happens to your machine or device and also you are not bound to use your device
every time. You can use any device to access your files anytime. And if you want you
can wipe the data anytime remotely from lost laptops if it gets to any wrong hands.

Also Read: Cloud Migration Risks | How to Mitigate Top Risks of Migrating

Competitiveness

With just a simple step of migration, you can become more competitive and compete
with companies globally. Moving on this environment gives access to enterprise-class
technology for almost everyone. With proper team and planning, even small businesses
can compete with big businesses.

Faster and Cheaper Access to Advanced Features

With cloud computing power, technologies enable a business to gain faster with more
economical access to all the advanced functionality with the introduction of a larger
pool of technology skills. It provided access to a larger set of integrated capabilities
such as conferencing, mobility, phones, and messaging.

By now you must have understood why it is necessary for your business to migrate to
cloud and we will be discussing the second parameter i.e What to migrate

What to migrate??
What exactly you need to migrate? What services and applications you can migrate to
the cloud platform. With regard to the migration classification, Binz et al classified
 migration into three types: Standardized Format Migration, Holistic migration, and
component format migration.

Applications are classified either as standalone applications also known as commercial

off the shelf and other is highly customized applications.

Standalone applications are mostly typical enterprise applications such as Microsoft

Exchange, MS Dynamics, and Sharepoint. Standalone applications run automatically and
you can easily move licenses over cloud application. The main task of standalone
applications is to transfer data.

On another hand highly customized applications are more nuanced. These applications
need to be evaluated individually and most of these are built in houses often with
easily available software that uses APIs and IP addresses rather than variables.

Moving applications in a multi-step process is not much different from simple traditional
cross-platform application migration. These five steps of cloud migration framework will
help you better understand the implementation phase of cloud migration.

Highly customized applications are not fit to run anywhere due to this these applications
are not suited for the cloud platform. For this third party migration tools come in action
such as Racemi. This gives the ability to look at the code and know how many direct IP
addresses are included in the code. Thus giving availability for applications to be deploy
to a public cloud.

It must be clearly kept in mind what applications/softwares need to be migrated and

does your business will be benefited from the migration.

After selecting which type of application you need to migrate and now we will be
discussing when you will be perfectly ready for the migration process.

When to Migrate
Before migrating you need to understand four parameters ie personal management,
legal requirements, application management and return on investment.

Personal Management

Ensure your team members get proper training in cloud offerings.

Ensure that various departments understand the role of Information Technology
 Ensure all your groups within the company works together i.e Network team,
application development team and System management team.

Return on Investment

Private cloud licensing usage

Applications which are most expensive
Is your company benefited from this technology change or not.

Legal Requirements

Service Level Agreements

Security requirements cost
Data sovereignty

The most obvious requirement which must be considered first is data sovereignty.

Application Management

When your applications need most of the time.

Which applications are most critical and need to be handled carefully and at what times.

Where to Migrate?
The first aspect which needs to be clear is were to migrate public or private cloud. If
you dont know what is the difference between public cloud and private cloud, you can
read our article on types of clouds.

Organizations should first consider types of applications to be migrated and where to

migrate your applications and workloads. It should be noted the level of security
needed and any data sovereignty issues which need to be considered.

Type of Cloud Services (SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS)

You have to select from three platforms which will be best suited for your company.
Platform as a service, Software as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service. are three
basic services and you can read in detail about these services in our article cloud
computing services.

Infrastructure as a service is the standardized offering where storage, compute and

network are owned by service providers and is provided on demand. Platform as a
service on other hand provides a platform with all the tools to build any application
quickly. Software as a service as the name suggests delivers software as service to an
organization.

We will be discussing in detail about migrating to IaaS, PaaS and SaaS and also pros
and cons in each case.

Now the question here arises is whether to build the application from the scratch or to
shift the existing application. The problem with building is money and cost of building
the same application twice and if you are thinking to forklift the application then it must
be first considered whether the application is cloud-enabled or not.

Local Cloud Provider or Global Cloud Provider

The one and most difficult decision that you have to take inevitably are whether you
want a local or a global cloud provider. Most of you must be familiar with some of best
cloud providers like Amazon, Azure, IBM Softlayer and much more.

By going with global providers, the advantage is that they will provide you all services
that even allows you to view some of performance and ability in a public cloud
environment. The problem with global providers is that data available is not kept for
long and it is not comprehensive enough for some of the applications.

If your applications need to be provided locally i.e for any corporate headquarters with
high-tech services, going with the local service provider will make a great sense.

Who to ask for Help and Advice??

The best thing about cloud migration companies is that they provide you with their
technicians to guide you all through the process of shifting or migrating to the cloud
platform. Organizations need not do it alone as there are technologies, service
providers and also resources available to migrate.

Third party technologies help to migrate server workload between different virtual,
physical and cloud-based environments. There are also third parties which discover
entire infrastructure both as onsite and public cloud environments

Cloud Migration Assessment Model

By following this assessment model, any organization can better determine the
organizational needs of their company. Before considering our needs we might ask
 ourselves questions like Is there any compatible version of the system available that is
already running that have same requirements as ours or Do I have to deal with
multiple IDs and Passwords.

To better understand the requirements you can follow 6 steps in cloud migration
assessment model which are:

1. Need
2. Cost
3. Accessibility
4. Control
5. Support
6. Regularity compliance

We will be discussing what strategy is best for your business and what cloud migration
strategy must you follow along with the proper project plan. If you are looking for
regularity matters, we should ask questions like Do I need to ensure my data is
securely transmitted over the internet or not? of Is my data secured on the server?

While some of the aspects of cloud assessment model are more relevant to some of the
organizations but for others its not. It is because each company needs to define the
requirements and goals of their organization and each company has their different
business strategy.

So Whats Your Cloud Migration

Strategy
To successfully move data and applications to the cloud, organizations need to craft
successful migration strategy, access risks and plan according to the requirements.

It seems completely perfect for you to migrate all your applications and resources at
once, there is no dying that some services can be tremendously beneficial for you but
migrating all your applications to the cloud at once is not a good idea.

You must be having a backup system available and you can take a risk with that and
migrate the workloads in parts. After the complete testing of new system, you can
deploy your ongoing system.

For getting more detail about cloud migration strategy and what plan works for your
business the best way, you can read an article on cloud migration strategy. Your system
will be cost efficient and scalable if you have a better cloud migration plan.