Glossary What are Cloud Migration Services?

Cloud migration services transfer an organization's digital assets to a cloud platform, reducing costs, improving scalability, and enhancing business agility through services and monitoring.  

Cloud migration services also refer to the process of moving an organization's digital assets such as files, databases, machine images, block volumes or tape backups from on-premises or other multicloud infrastructure to a single cloud platform. 

These services are provided by cloud service providers or cloud consultants who evaluate an organization's IT infrastructure, workloads, and costs to tailor the cloud migration journey to their specific needs. The migration process helps organizations plan, build, optimize, secure, and manage their cloud environments, using a cloud management platform. 

Why is cloud migration important to business growth? 

A well-defined cloud migration strategy and ongoing monitoring are critical to ensure a successful cloud migration. By migrating data to cloud-native environments and harnessing cloud technologies, enterprises unlock new avenues for innovation and operational models. The inherent scalability of cloud platforms enables swift responses to market fluctuations and consumer needs.

Cloud migration serves as a key catalyst for cost savings and technological progress. By shifting to the cloud, organizations transition from a capital expenditure model to an operational one, paying only for the IT resources they consume. This change minimizes costs and eliminates the need for significant upfront enablement investments in hardware and infrastructure.

In short, cloud migration services help organizations approach cloud adoption with confidence, accelerating time-to-value and ensuring a smooth transition to the cloud.

What does the cloud migration process look like? 

Every organization is different. Our process usually begins with assessing your current IT infrastructure, followed by developing a migration plan and executing the transfer of data and applications. Cloud security and cloud governance management is also crucial when transitioning to the new cloud platform.

Here’s a quick look at the steps you can expect:

1. Define your cloud strategy
2. Assess the current environment
3. Plan the migration
4. Ready the organization
5. Implement migration
6. Secure and manage

The duration of cloud migration services varies and is influenced by several key factors. These variables include the size of the organization and its IT infrastructure, the volume of data to be transferred to the cloud, and the specific services anticipated for use. Small to medium-sized enterprises can typically complete their migration efforts within a few months, while larger global corporations may require months to years for a thorough and successful transition.

What are the types of cloud migration services?

The process of migrating to the cloud is not one-size-fits-all. Organizations must carefully consider their unique requirements, resources, and objectives when planning their cloud migration strategy. There are seven types of cloud migration with their own characteristics, benefits, and considerations.

1. Rehosting (lift and shift)
2. Replatforming (lift and tinker)
3. Refactoring (re-architecting)
4. Repurchasing (drop and shop)
5. Retiring
6. Retaining (hybrid cloud)
7. Revising (optimization)

Discover which type you need and get expert assistance with your cloud migration project, hybrid or otherwise, by reaching out to Insight's award-winning team. Our experienced professionals will guide you through every step of our cloud migration services process to ensure a successful transition.