On-premise to Cloud Migration – A Guide to Digital Infrastructure

To obtain the maximum potential of the Cloud, digital pioneers need to adopt a tactical migration roadmap. This may sound generic, but unfortunately, a large number of tech leaders continue to move to the Cloud unsystematically with minimal groundwork in place.

On average, 50% of organizations still prefer managing data and IT workloads using in-house data centers. However, the onset of a broader digital modernization strategy is imposing a lot of pressure on organizations with a huge fraction of workloads still hosted on-premises to shift more to a Cloud ecosystem. This pressure has key reasons – tech leaders want to move completely to the Cloud to make IT outside the data center environment. Similarly, they want to optimize IT spending, reduce risks, and enhance agility through partial on-premise to Cloud migration.

But merely pushing workloads to the Cloud in an arbitrary approach is a recipe for catastrophe. That's why leaders should stick to a failsafe migration checklist.

3 Questions to Ask Before Commencing On-premise to Cloud Migration

What Are The Crucial Business Objectives Of The Migration?

If the migration initiative aims to reduce operational costs, it can lead to different solutions than if the goal is to minimize risk or enhance Customer Experience (CX). Determining the business drivers that the migration will support is important.

What Are The Design Principles That Ideally Support Objectives?

During the planning stage in the IT domain, you might use a range of design principles, such as creating instead of buying from a third party or configuring rather than programming. Before deciding on explicit technologies or product assistance, IT leaders require a strong knowledge of the design principles that migration will embrace. This way, they can effectively categorize the characteristics required in the products and technologies. For instance, consider the following scenarios:

• Choose whether the emphasis should be on establishing Cloud services to swap on-premises services or adapt SaaS models. If the key business factor is augmented CX, then leaders need to focus on build over buy option. If the key factor is reduced costs, it might be relying on third-party service providers.
• Choose whether the focus should be on a standard, single-platform, or infrastructure implementation. If the focus of Cloud migration is on the need for agility, it could favor the single-platform implementation approach; if the goal is to reduce IT staffing, that might push for an infrastructure implementation approach.

What Categories of Technology Meets The Design Principles?

That is, leaders must be able to determine which technology fulfills the principles chosen. For example, if the leader expects all IT workers should have some experience in using software, then implementation of Low-Code No-Code (LCNC) development tools must be on the itinerary, in contrast to where the focus is on configuration or procurement.

Once leaders decide on these questions, they can start devising a roadmap for shifting applications/systems and choosing the platforms to migrate them.

Comprehensive On-premise to Cloud Migration Checklist for Innovation Leaders

#1 Preparing and Educating Organization

Cloud buy-in and education is the foremost step. IT leaders must educate their CEO, executives, and board members about the need to spend on Cloud migration that drives greater agility and innovation for the enterprise. CIOs/CTOs should use their digital strategy to build reliable business cases for hosting workloads in their most suitable Cloud ecosystem and validate the investments required to do so. Validation often comes from demonstrating how the Cloud will improve user experiences, and agility, reduce total cost of ownership, and drive innovation.

CIOs must also work with line-of-business leaders to understand their needs and what applications and services are to be migrated. This approach can simplify the migration process. Furthermore, they must cooperate with Cloud-native experts, who will certainly offer insight into their desired Cloud platform and services. When IT and business priorities are aligned with outcomes, it’s easier to attain success with migration initiatives.

#2 Assessing Cloud Readiness and Feasibility

Before commencing a migration, IT leaders must assess the governance models and infrastructure dependencies of their on-premise workloads. The success of a Cloud migration ultimately depends on the value of an enterprise application and the environment in which the application is deployed. Evaluate which Cloud environment (private, public, or hybrid)meets the requirements of existing and new applications, aligning each workload with the business value and priorities. By choosing the environment, leaders can leverage resourceful functionalities, such as exponential scaling, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning capabilities, microservices, and containers.

A successful Cloud migration strategy also encompasses technical planning. A plain “lift-and-shift” isn’t profitable and practicable for most enterprises and often results in performance concerns or infrastructure incompatibilities. While there are several benefits to leveraging functionalities across different Cloud environments, accomplishing migration without errors is more challenging than simply selecting and running in any environment. Most IT leaders support deploying a hybrid Cloud ecosystem (39%) to leverage multiple services and improve business continuity.

#3 Shifting Data from Disparate Infrastructure

Cloud migration must begin by shifting data from traditional systems. This trend is becoming more prevalent among enterprises that have been looking to augment data center infrastructure with features, such as automation and self-service. Organizations that keep up with user and business demands experience obstructions, such as the disparate infrastructure’s high operating expenses.

Implementing a Cloud working infrastructure requires eliminating traditional complexity in the data center, starting with the memory resources and extending to the Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM). However, particular investments in technology, people, and processes must be made by leaders at each stage of Cloud migration.

#4 Evaluating Applications Against Migration Options

The perfect Cloud infrastructure for an organization is one that offers the ease and stability of on-premises systems. Organizations create several transition strategies in response to budget cuts or restraining mandates, and they should consider the complexity of shifting a data center or application, as well as the cost benefits when making the decision to migrate to a Cloud ecosystem.

IT leaders should consider preferred business outcomes, deployment replicas, investment primacies service providers, policies, and talent sourcing. Along with financial concerns, many crucial aspects of a successful migration depend on organizational structure. This includes the culture, operations, infrastructure, and applications—which may generate complications. That’s why leaders must evaluate each application within their portfolio during on-premise to Cloud migration against the following options:

• Replacing the application with a SaaS version of a built-in environment
• Application Re-platforming, keeping it untouched but shifting from a highly virtualized ecosystem to the Cloud
• Refactoring the application in line with Cloud requirements, leveraging Cloud’s innovative architecture, developer, and microservices environments. This can be done with the help of a Cloud migration consulting company, as their experts consider all the related application dependencies.

#5 Deploying Cloud Management Tools

The optimal scenario for any IT enterprise is the flexibility to build any type of product, deploy on the Cloud, and deliver services from anywhere—all while upholding security and governance. These two factors are important as users and product requirements keep evolving over time. However, providing this level of versatility brings complication and complication means risk.

To handle and master these complications, leaders must implement diverse management tools and models. They can overcome inconsistent security models, and heterogeneous user policies thereby improving IT efficiency. To manage the Cloud ecosystem without greater risk and complexities, enterprises need management tools to ensure consistent operations. They provide higher security, governance, transparency, and automation.

#6 Find and Promote the Right Talent

Although migrating to the Cloud can deliver higher speed and flexibility, seamless infrastructure management necessitates extra Cloud talent and skill sets. Such experts help not only during development and integration but also improve business expertise. A dedicated Cloud migration services provider can help IT leaders meet their business goals. These experts can direct the required cultural change through Cloud adoption, establish time-tested strategies, and drive innovation. Organizations that disregard finding or hiring dedicated Cloud resources may end up adopting services over ad hoc procedures that result in delayed work cycles and inefficiencies.

Closing Thoughts

Leveraging the best of the Cloud enables IT leaders to make their enterprises more agile and competitive. Though on-premise to Cloud migration is not often a cakewalk, many organizations tussle with or achieve partial success when migrating workloads to the Cloud. Following the above-mentioned Cloud migration checklist ensures leaders can evade all major pitfalls and start planning their adoption without the distress of exorbitant slip-ups.