Choosing A Cloud Migration Strategy

Embracing the potential of the cloud has become an unavoidable requirement for success in today’s digital economy, especially as businesses rapidly migrate their applications to the cloud to fuel growth. Gartner predicts that global spending on public cloud services will reach $494.7 billion in 2022, up from $257.5 billion in 2020. By 2024, more than 45% of IT spending will be shifted from traditional to cloud-based solutions.

What is Cloud Migration?

Cloud migration is more than just moving to the cloud; it is an iterative process of cost reduction and reaching the full capability of the cloud. It has an impact on all parts of the organisation, including people, processes, and technology. The cloud, on the other hand, may allow great scalability, performance, agility, remote work, and cost-efficiency through flexible consumption and pricing methods.

Gartner’s 5 R’s

Gartner has identified the “5 Rs” cloud migration strategies. Organisations considering a cloud migration should examine which migration technique best meets their goals. Each of these is described briefly below:

Rehost – moving applications to the cloud as-is.
Refactor – modifying applications to better support the cloud environment.
Revise – moving applications to the cloud without major changes but take advantage of the benefits of the cloud environment.
Rebuild – rewrite the application from scratch.
Replace – retire the application and replace it with a new cloud-native application.

Cloud Migration Deployment Models

Enterprises today have more than one cloud scenario from which to choose:

  • Many users can access computational resources in the public cloud via the internet or dedicated connections.
  • A private cloud maintains data in-house and has a proprietary architecture.
  • The hybrid cloud model combines public and private cloud architectures and allows data to be transferred between the two.
  • A business uses IaaS solutions from more than one public cloud provider in a multi-cloud scenario.

The 4 Category Method for a Cloud Migration

Use this method to ask yourself some helpful questions about your cloud migration.
1. Plan your cloud migration What will your use case be? Specialised just for one application or are you moving a whole suite of applications?

2. Make your cloud migration business case How much will be moving to the cloud and working in the cloud cost?
What’s the total cost of ownership between your current environment and the new cloud environment?

3. Execute your cloud migration How will you carry out your cloud migration with minimal disruption to your daily operations?
How will you maintain code and infrastructure for the two environments?
Does your staff have the skills to execute this migration and what is your evidence?

4. Maintain your new deployments
How will you maintain the security of your data within your cloud?
How will you stay up-to-date on newer versions of services?
How will you make sure your cloud costs don’t spiral out of control?

For more information on ‘Choosing A Cloud Migration Strategy’ check out our infographic below.

Many small to medium-sized businesses are just not equipped to make decisions or objectively weigh up their options when considering a cloud migration solution. That’s where the experts at ERS IT Solutions come in! Cloud Migration Strategy