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Is your company ready for a Cloud migration?

IT executives often face difficulties or experience limited success in their migration to the cloud, but this is not a reason to give up. Is your company ready for a Cloud migration?

In theory, lessons learned should be used to improve results in subsequent attempts. Here we leave you a check list of the main areas that organizations looking to modernize critical applications should consider to avoid repeating their mistakes.

Is your company ready for a Cloud migration?

Appointment of a migration architect

Every cloud migration project should establish a migration architect role early on to lead the effort. This would be a systems architect level position and the individual would be responsible for planning and completing all aspects of cloud adoption. The role is responsible for defining the refactoring required for a successful migration. You must also design your data migration strategies, outline your cloud solution requirements, and determine your priorities. In addition, it must establish the mechanisms of production change.

With so many gears turning during the big migration project, there are many critical decisions and technical plans that need to be made. The migration architect oversees everything and will be responsible for all aspects of the migration. This is essential for the success of the project.

Cloud integration

There are two ways that organizations can move an application from an on-premises data center to the cloud. It can be through the integration of the cloud in a superficial way or in a deep way.

Is your company ready for a Cloud migration?

Shallow cloud integration is also known as “lift-and-shift“. In it, IT teams move the local application to the cloud and cannot make changes, or these are limited, in the servers instantiated in the cloud in order to run the application. This is quick and easy, as minor changes to the application are enough to make it run in a new environment. No exclusive cloud services are required. This approach is called lift and shift because the application is lifted “as is” and then moved or switched to the cloud.

Deep cloud integration requires modification of applications to take advantage of key capabilities. Some examples are autoscaling or dynamic load balancing, but also serverless computing capabilities. This model can also involve the use of a specific cloud data store.

Single cloud vs Multi-cloud

At the beginning of the cloud journey, IT leaders must decide whether the organization will use a single cloud provider or multiple providers. Ensuring that application optimization works with a specific cloud provider is relatively straightforward. Developers have a single set of cloud APIs to learn, and the application can take advantage of everything the chosen cloud provider has to offer.

However, users will experience the provider lock. This means that once the developer teams have updated the application to work with this provider, future plans to switch providers could require as much or more effort as the migration they just completed. Another aspect to consider is that having a single cloud provider restricts the organization’s ability to negotiate important terms, such as price and SLA, with the cloud provider.

Furthermore, there are also several different models within the multi-cloud category itself.

  • One application per cloud. The simplest multi-cloud approach is to run one set of applications on one cloud provider and another set on a different cloud. This allows organizations to increase commercial storage with multiple vendors, as well as flexibility for future application allocation. Additionally, developers can optimize each application for the provider it runs on.
  • Application in several cloud providers. It is possible to divide parts of an application among several providers. In this way, IT teams can maximize the key benefits each vendor offers.
  • Independent application from the cloud. Some companies build their applications to run on any cloud provider. That is why an application can work at the same time in several providers or be divided between them. This approach offers exceptional flexibility in negotiations with suppliers. However, development teams may find it difficult to use the key capabilities of each cloud provider.

Is check list of course it is not definitive as there is no “right way” to be successful in your migration to the cloud. Of course, there are other methods that IT leaders can consider. Regardless of which cloud migration approach an organization chooses, it is critical to always promote a safe and secure cloud environment.

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