Navigating Cloud Migration: Charting the Journey Ahead

Introduction

Cloud Migration. The term itself is a nightmare for most IT leaders mainly because of the complex nature of the whole process. Some challenges involved are managing high volumes of data, and migration costs, ensuring data security while migrating, ensuring compatibility, and so on.

Despite the challenges involved, the industry is not showing any signs of slowing down in the current scenario. According to Gartner, 95% of the data workload will get hosted in the cloud by 2025, a sharp rise from 30% in 2021.

A well-sought-out strategy takes the ambiguities away from a technology leader while implementing a cloud migration project. Below are the key points to be kept in mind for a frictionless cloud migration project:

1. Lock Objectives
2. Action Plan
3. Execution
4. Risk Assessment and Risk Planning
5. Optimize and Scale
6. Stakeholders Involved.

Lock Objectives

Carefully design a cloud migration value proposition from both IT and business perspectives. Objectives derive from the identified value proposition.

Once objectives are derived, understand the business-specific use cases for cloud adoption. Also, define a formal cloud strategy in line with the IT strategy. Define short-term goals and actions to achieve the ultimate goal.

Also, ensure that all the involved departments are taken into account while making a decision.

Action Plan

Carefully select vendors and negotiate contracts. Take a closer look at the available providers. Decide on whether to go for Single Cloud or Multi-Cloud. Ideally, it would be better to opt for a multi-Cloud setup. Identify the cloud-specific risks at this stage and start identifying preventive measures.

Start identifying viable options in security, architecture, networking, etc.

Exécution

Optimize and deploy workload. Once the workload is identified precisely, segment it in meaningful ways and establish a workflow.

Adopt best practices for implementation.

Risk Assessment and Risk Planning

Always stick to the established workflow, and do not disrupt the workflow unless necessary.

Make sensitive data identification and monitoring a priority. Also, use third-party tools to establish a security control plane.

The governance adherence and risk assessment results should be fed back directly to the respective workflows.

Optimize and Scale

Always look for ways to improve the cloud footprint.

Established workflows with feedback plugged right in will get improved over time and will optimize themselves.

Prioritize investments to improve the existing cloud strategies and implementation.

Stakeholders Involved

It is not just the infrastructure team that should be involved in the process. The most successful companies employ cross-functional teams for the success of the project. The stakeholders who have to be involved in the process are.

1. CIO – A CIO should act as the backbone of the entire project. He should provide guidance, and mentor for strategy and planning.
2. Infra & Operations – Manages and Operates Infrastructure processes to enable a smooth migration.
3. Technology Team – Tech team is responsible for the whole migration process. They develop plans, select architecture, and decide on tools for the project. They upskill if necessary.

How Innovature can help

Implementing the discussed roadmap can be an extended challenge if not done correctly. Skilled professionals and extensive engineering know-how are critical when dealing with complex cloud migration projects. Innovature has proven experience formulating complex cloud migration strategies and assisting organizations to adopt, migrate, and integrate with minimal disruptions. Our expert team enables hassle-free cloud migration to:

1. Adopt a cloud-first deployment philosophy and automation to streamline backend services
2. Choose from public, private, or hybrid cloud approaches and adopt suitably
3. Decide the order in which applications are to be migrated and ensure application speed
4. Enhance increased availability of third-party tools for specific workloads
5. Analyze interdependence between integration points to guarantee business continuity

Curious? Talk to our consultants.