Navigating Cloud Migration: How and Where to Begin
- Cloud, Security, Software Development
Migrating to the cloud is a priority for many IT leaders and their teams. According to Gartner, over 95% of new digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms by 2025. Driven by the promise of scalability, cost savings, and operational agility, more and more companies are looking to shift away from on-premises data centers. However, cloud migration journeys often stall without a clear strategy that is aligned with business objectives. This article explores how to successfully evaluate, select, and migrate to a cloud platform.
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Benefits of Cloud Migration
Cloud migration, the process of transferring data, applications, and IT infrastructure to a cloud-based environment, has emerged as a key aspect of digital transformation efforts. Organizations across industries are looking to take advantage of critical benefits, such as:
Enhanced Scalability: Cloud platforms provide the flexibility to seamlessly scale compute resources up or down based on fluctuating workload demands. This eliminates the need for costly over-provisioning of on-premises infrastructure while ensuring that businesses have the resources they need to meet demand spikes without delays or disruptions.
Improved Operational Agility: Cloud technology transforms the way software is being developed, enabling rapid deployment of new applications and updates to existing programs. Teams leverage on-demand provisioning to roll out new features and enhancements swiftly. This accelerates time-to-market and enhances innovation cycles, which is key to responding to market dynamics or competitive pressures.
Enhanced Collaboration: Cloud architectures foster seamless collaboration and agile development practices, breaking down geographical barriers and enabling teams to work together effectively from anywhere in the world. Shared access to workflows, code, and data facilitates collaboration and streamlines project management. Advanced IAM (Identity Access Management) features help regulate accessibility by ensuring that the right users have the appropriate access to technology resources.
Cost Savings: Cloud providers offer pay-as-you-go pricing models, eliminating the need for upfront capital expenditures associated with on-premises infrastructure. Companies only pay for the cloud resources they consume, resulting in maximized cost efficiency and the elimination of underutilized on-premises capacity.
How to Select the Ideal Cloud Provider
One of the most critical steps for a successful migration is evaluating the specific needs of each application to determine the optimal cloud provider and architecture. Important considerations include:
Compliance Requirements: Regulated industries must adhere to strict data privacy and security regulations, such as HIPAA and PCI. Evaluate whether cloud providers offer dedicated platforms designed to meet these compliance requirements, ensuring data security and regulatory compliance.
Application Architecture: Assess the compatibility of each workload with cloud-native deployment before migrating. Legacy applications may require re-architecting to fully leverage the cloud’s capabilities and avoid performance bottlenecks.
Consumption Costs: Analyze the hourly rates, storage costs, and data egress charges of leading cloud providers. Utilize total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis to determine the most cost-efficient platform over time, factoring in expected resource utilization.
In-House Expertise: Evaluate the technical expertise within your organization to manage implementations on each major cloud platform. Consider augmenting in-house skills with external expertise to minimize the learning curve and ensure a successful migration process.
Proximity to Users: Network latency significantly impacts application performance. This is especially critical with customer-facing applications. Prioritize cloud providers with data centers located closest to your target audience to ensure fast network connectivity and optimal response times.
Vendor Lock-In Risks: Understand the portability of data and applications across different cloud platforms to avoid vendor lock-in. Adopting a multi-cloud and hybrid cloud strategy has proven to reduce vendor dependency, mitigate risks, and increase flexibility.
Cloud Migration: Common Pitfalls and Best Practices to Avoid Them
Despite the benefits highlighted above, over 50% of cloud migrations fall short of expectations due to common pitfalls that can derail the process and hinder desired outcomes.
No Clear Strategy
A well-defined strategy or roadmap is the cornerstone of a successful cloud migration. Without a comprehensive plan aligned with business objectives, organizations risk project failure (i.e., exceeding budget, increasing timeline, or not delivering targeted value and return on investment (ROI).
Underestimating Complexity
Migrating legacy applications often involves compatibility fixes, data transformations, and cloud optimizations. Failure to plan for these complexities can lead to cost overruns, delays, and performance issues that impede business operations.
Sole Focus on Cost Reduction
While cost optimization is a critical consideration, solely focusing on near-term savings over long-term business impact often leads to suboptimal solutions. It is a best practice to find the right balance between cost efficiency, speed, capabilities, and user experience to maximize overall value.
Limited Availability of In-House Expertise
Successfully migrating one or more applications to the cloud typically requires skilled cloud architects and engineers. Many IT teams do not have this level of expertise available in-house. As a result, projects are augmented with internal resources who have not been properly trained to manage these complexities and who also have other priorities. This often leads to cost overruns, missed deadlines, performance issues, and/or security vulnerabilities. To address these challenges, organizations should consider augmenting their in-house IT teams with external cloud expertise and/or resources who can provide the necessary skills and experience to plan, execute, and manage cloud migrations with confidence.
Conclusion
Migrating to the cloud provides organizations with critical benefits, such as scalability, flexibility, and cost savings. While Cloud migrations are part of many companies’ IT roadmaps, more than 50% of these projects fail, as they require careful planning, execution, and ongoing management. Organizations that fail to address common pitfalls experience delays, cost overruns, performance issues, and security vulnerabilities. To avoid these pitfalls and fully take advantage of powerful cloud architectures, organizations need to:
- Develop a comprehensive cloud migration strategy that aligns with business objectives.
- Choose the right cloud provider based on their applications’ specific needs and requirements.
- Ensure that the required expertise is available, either in-house or with external resources
ELASTECH is a recognized provider of cloud consulting and development services. Our experts will help determine the specific benefits of the cloud for your application(s), choose the right provider, and develop a roadmap to migrate with confidence. Click below to schedule your free consultation.
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