eBook
Success in the Cloud:
5 Steps for Effective Migration
By Insight Editor / 23 May 2023 / Topics: Compliance Hybrid cloud Migration Cybersecurity
By Insight Editor / 23 May 2023 / Topics: Compliance Hybrid cloud Migration Cybersecurity
Cloud can offer scalability, automation, easier innovation and cost savings. But there are many questions to consider in a move to the cloud. Read this guide for a condensed roadmap to help increase your chance of success.
It’s safe to say the cloud is no longer “the next big thing” — most organizations are already taking advantage of the many benefits cloud has to offer. In fact, our Insight-commissioned Foundry survey of 400 decision-makers found that more than half of respondents’ data resides in public or hybrid cloud.1
Cloud may be commonplace, but success in the cloud is not automatic. Cloud migration — whether you’re just starting out or expanding your existing cloud footprint — brings with it several questions and considerations: Which applications are better in the cloud versus on-premises? How can you migrate with minimal risk and disruption? What about security and compliance in the cloud?
This guide will help answer these questions and put you on the path to maximizing the benefits of cloud.
Before you strike out on a new project, it can be helpful to see how others have executed similar initiatives. These findings from The Path to Digital Transformation: Where Leaders Stand in 2023 will help you get a feel for where organizations like yours are succeeding with cloud — and where common challenges lie.
Integration, security and performance management tie for the title of top challenge in public/hybrid cloud deployment.5
Security is the top challenge with multicloud strategies.6
The data goes to show that, though cloud is a crucial part of digital transformation, a) it’s not the right fit for every workload, and b) it can be tough to integrate, manage and secure — especially in a multicloud model.
For making the most of cloud, whether you’re looking at wholesale migration, application modernization or preparing your infrastructure for transformation efforts like adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI), the steps outlined in this ebook can help you ensure cloud success.
Note: These steps don’t have to be followed sequentially. Some may overlap, while others may be shortened, altered or streamlined to accommodate each organization’s unique schedule and priorities.
Much of cloud success comes from the initial groundwork laid during these first few phases of assessment and planning. This first step involves assessing how ready your organization is for a migration initiative. It takes a very close look at current IT operations, current processes and people. Sample questions here include:
This second phase looks closely at how ready your applications are for a move to cloud. But it doesn’t just stop at applications. It looks carefully at the needs of application workloads. A workload represents an application and any upstream or downstream dependencies an application requires to operate successfully.
A workload may involve certain compute, network or storage needs. It can require one or more databases. It might even involve other, interconnected applications. This is where you start to determine “which workload goes where” regarding cloud. This is not always an easy task.
Insight’s survey found that more than half — 52% — of surveyed organizations with a multicloud strategy struggle with workload/platform alignment.7
Answers to these questions help you prioritize which application workloads are more cloud-ready than others. It can also help determine any cost investments toward application modernization or optimization that may be required before certain legacy workloads can succeed in the cloud. You may find some workloads better suited for hybrid cloud or continued, on-premises operations — at least for the short term.
It’s important to ask the right questions when deciding which workloads should go where. A good start is the reporter’s fact-finding mantra:
When moving to the cloud, don’t just do the bare minimum. Hasty “lift-and-shift” moves to the cloud lead to unexpected charges if you estimate your resource requirements incorrectly. It can also be quite costly to retrofit later if problems arise. Take time to plan necessary workload resources accordingly before moving them to the cloud. Similarly, plan an extra buffer of cloud resources per workload for unexpected peaks in use.
This phase takes all of the data and findings you’ve amassed and develops a detailed action plan to move forward with the cloud. Take the time to work out the details here. Done properly, these plans will serve as a critical roadmap to guide you smoothly toward success with cloud services. At this stage, you will actively:
By this point, you should have done much of the initial groundwork. Now it’s time to try out your plan and kick some tires. Two core activities are typically involved in this stage: Proof of Concept (PoC) and migration of non-production workloads.
This is the perfect time to try one or more PoCs. Want to see how one Cloud Management Platform (CMP) compares to another? What about how a few sample virtual machine workloads work in the public cloud? You might want to explore how a cloud-based Database as a Service (DBaaS) platform like Microsoft® Azure® SQL could support workloads in contrast to your on-premises SQL-based environment. This is the perfect time to try things out. At the PoC stage, you can start to:
This is where you start to actively migrate a good portion of your identified, nonproduction application workloads to the cloud. This is the chance for a better trial run to see how production workloads might run in the cloud.
For bigger organizations with several hundred (or even several thousand) workloads, this process often occurs in phases. Phase 1, for instance, might involve migrating only certain identified workloads, move groups and processes. This includes migrating or replicating any data needed to support the workloads. Included is also deployment of important backup and disaster recovery processes to support the migration.
Many clients prefer to go gradually to the cloud by first migrating manageable clusters of low-risk, non-production workloads, and then making adjustments as they go. A few others are willing to take more risk — they may choose to migrate as much as thousands of workloads on a more aggressive timeline. The choice depends on how much risk you are willing to incur.
All steps leading to this point have prepared you to now go live and migrate targeted production data and workloads to the cloud. By this stage, you should have a good handle on new roles and who has them, and how workloads will be secured, managed and supported. Testing and validation are still required here, just as when migrating non-production workloads.
In case there are challenges or sudden changes in move schedules, established migration runbooks with rollback procedures should also be available for all parties involved in the migration.
Here as well, you will:
By doing the earlier planning and migration groundwork with non-production workloads, you should have higher confidence that this step of going live will go smoothly.
The cloud has become an essential building block in many organizations’ growth strategies. Not only does it deliver on the benefits discussed in the beginning of this guide, but it often serves as the foundation for more advanced transformation, including application modernization, AI adoption and more.
Navigating cloud for success is an ongoing journey requiring strategic preparation, cautious implementation and consistent evaluation at every step.
Explore the resources below to learn more about what it looks like to start your cloud journey with Insight and see the kind of results we can help you achieve.
Sources:
1 MarketPulse Research by Foundry Research Services. (February 2023). The Path to Digital Transformation: Where Leaders Stand in 2023. Slide 11. Commissioned by Insight.
2 MarketPulse Research by Foundry Research Services. (February 2023). The Path to Digital Transformation: Where Leaders Stand in 2023. Slide 11. Commissioned by Insight.
3 MarketPulse Research by Foundry Research Services. (February 2023). The Path to Digital Transformation: Where Leaders Stand in 2023. Slide 21. Commissioned by Insight.
4 MarketPulse Research by Foundry Research Services. (February 2023). The Path to Digital Transformation: Where Leaders Stand in 2023. Slide 11. Commissioned by Insight.
5 Ibid.
6 MarketPulse Research by Foundry Research Services. (February 2023). The Path to Digital Transformation: Where Leaders Stand in 2023. Slide 43. Commissioned by Insight.
7 MarketPulse Research by Foundry Research Services. (February 2023). The Path to Digital Transformation: Where Leaders Stand in 2023. Slide 43. Commissioned by Insight.
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