Cloud Migration Strategies For a Seamless Transition

What Is a Cloud Migration Strategy? 

A cloud migration strategy is an organization’s plan of action for successfully moving data, applications, and processes onto a cloud platform. Such strategies become essential due to the requirements, data security, and costs that can differ from one dataset to another. Those differences require a variety of strategies in turn.  

Cloud migration strategies apply whether an organization moves from local infrastructure to cloud infrastructure, moves from one cloud service to another, or sets up a hybrid cloud to leverage both local and cloud infrastructures. Time invested in devising such strategies will help ensure that the challenges of cloud migration do not outweigh its benefits once implemented. 

In this post, we will go over the benefits of migration, cloud migration strategies, deployment methods, and common migration challenges that cloud migration strategies can help solve. 

Benefits of Migrating 

The benefits of migrating to the cloud apply to various use cases as well as companies and organizations large and small. Such benefits include: 

• Cost – The cloud provider managing the cloud service can handle the necessary upkeep for maintenance and upgrades. This can save an organization the cost of maintenance and upgrades to host local infrastructure and keep it operational. 
• Security – Cloud providers provide standard and enhanced security options for centralized data and remote access as part of their service, as well as backup and logging options for disaster recovery. These security options can address security flaws in local infrastructure and ensure businesses can remain operational and secure.  
• Scalability – Cloud services can scale for an organization’s needs with greater ease and agility compared to the on-prem setup of servers, licenses, storage, and networks. This enables organizations to stay flexible and businesses to maintain a competitive edge. 

• Usability – Cloud services can offer flexible and digital solutions for both the employees and customers of an organization, using security options where appropriate. This empowers an organization to meet the needs of both userbases and improve their user experiences.      

Types of Cloud Migration Strategies

Cloud migration strategies can be broadly defined under six different approaches. Each applies to a different use case and should not be perceived as one-size-fits-all solutions. Organizations will likely need to use more than one approach, depending on the needs of a given dataset and its current state.  

Rehosting 

Rehosting lifts the existing data and applications as-is from on-prem infrastructure and shifts them onto a cloud platform. “Lift and shift” is a common name for this strategy. This simpler approach works best for organizations that are looking for a cloud migration with the least required changes to their data and applications from legacy systems.  

Rehosting can be automated with tools such as Classify360 (for data) and can also help in the long-term with implementing other cloud migration strategies. Rehosting is also one of the simpler ways to help reduce costs.  

Replatforming 

Replatorming takes the rehosting strategy a step further by attempting to modernize an organization’s existing applications to leverage scaling and automation on the cloud service without replacing them outright. “Lift, tinker, and shift” is a common name for this strategy. This approach can work for organizations trying to improve the performance of rehosted data and applications without resorting to the application overhaul of a refactoring strategy. However, replatforming might not yield as much improvement as refactoring could.  

Repurchasing 

Repurchasing differs from rehosting and replatforming by purchasing cloud-native applications to replace legacy applications entirely. “Drop and shop” is a common name for this strategy. This approach can be cost-effective when legacy applications are too costly for an organization to modernize and a cloud-native IaaS solution already exists as a viable replacement.  

Classify360, using policies to perform actions on classified data in legacy systems, can assist in the data migration required to implement this strategy from on-prem services to cloud-native services.    

Refactoring 

Refactoring is a more extensive cloud migration strategy where the applications are rebuilt from the ground up to take advantage of cloud-native features not available in the existing environment. This is the most intensive and expensive strategy for cloud migration that is sometimes saved for after the migration, due to the investment in talent and development needed. However, this would be a means to implement cloud-design principles to the fullest, such as shifting from on-prem servers to serverless cloud architecture, with a significant return on investment in the long run.  

Retiring 

Retiring assesses applications that are no longer needed due to the cloud migration, so they can be retired instead of migrated to the cloud. This strategy is a means to drop unnecessary applications from active use for cost savings. Retiring also reduces the number of tools that must be learned by an organization for their digital, cloud-based solutions. 

Classify360 has indexing tools for data sources that can help identify data used by retired applications to determine what should be archived, deleted, or migrated.    

Retaining 

Retaining is a precautionary strategy that assesses applications and data that would require significant work before they can be ready for cloud migration. It may not yet make sense to migrate some of the applications and data, such as for cost or for regulatory compliance. In this case, legacy applications and data are retained in part, such as for a hybrid solution. This approach is also useful for long-term cloud migration that requires a targeted approach to stay on-schedule. 

Classify360’s Search, Model, and Analyze tools can help organizations assess and classify data that can be migrated or must be retained in legacy systems.   

Deployment Methods

Once the cloud migration strategies needed have been assessed and are ready for implementation, decisions must also be made on the deployment method for the cloud service. Deployment methods fall into three distinct categories: 

• Single Cloud – If an organization only needs one cloud provider, cloud migration can be directed to a single public or private cloud. This would be the most limiting, but it is also the easiest approach. 
• Multicloud – Multiple public cloud providers can be utilized for a cloud migration. This approach gives an organization more choice in applications and better options for contingencies such as backup and redundancy. 
• Hybrid – On-prem data centers, public clouds, and private clouds are used in tandem for cloud migration. This approach works best for large-scale, long-term migration that needs a retaining strategy to succeed. It also requires the most coordination between environments.  

Common Migration Challenges

When the cloud migration strategies and the deployment method have been determined, migration challenges can occur almost as soon as you start the migration process. Keep in mind the more common challenges so you can plan for them: 

• Cost Management – Cost savings can be hard to keep on-target if cloud expenses are underestimated. Keep in mind not only the cost of the cost migration itself, but the recurring costs and scaling costs of your potential cloud providers. 
• Downtime – The time required to migrate to the cloud, especially large-scale migrations, can incur downtime on an organization’s operations without preparation. Maintaining legacy systems as a backup or to work in tandem with the cloud can minimize the need for downtime to carry out the migration. 
• Migration Time – The migration itself can be a time-consuming process, whether transferred over the internet or physically shipped to a cloud provider. The migration could take multiple transfers to carry out successfully and securely at a large scale. To ensure the time investment pays off and does not balloon in cost, steps should be taken to isolate retained and ROT datasets from the datasets that must be migrated. Classify360 can greatly assist in this sort of data preparation. 
• Data loss – There is risk of data loss during a large transfer. Back-ups should be made for data about to be transferred. Steps to verify the data post-migration should also be put in place. 

• Training – The more complicated the cloud migration and deployment, the more training is needed to effectively carry out both processes. The employees responsible for managing the cloud will need that training to understand the scope and strategies for a successful cloud migration and deployment.  
• Support – Training should also be planned for the rest of the organization to help raise awareness on how to best use the cloud deployment for daily tasks and long-term goals alike, and how it benefits them. This helps build long-term support across the organization for the cloud migration, and in makes it easier to earn and keep the support of stakeholders for long-term migration goals. 

Classify360 Can Help

As mentioned, Classify360 can be a valuable tool for your cloud migration strategies. Classify360’s data governance can help assess the data in your existing environments to determine the best cloud migration strategies for your data and to prepare that data for the migration challenges that can occur.  

To learn more about how Classify360 can help your organization with your cloud migration strategy, you can click here to book an intro call, and check “Cloud Adoption & Migration” as a topic of interest.