Your Guide to On-Prem to Cloud Migration 

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ON-PREM AND CLOUD

In the digital age, the infrastructure of data, its costs, and its means of security have evolved over time. Organizations have always sought cutting-edge tools and solutions for their digital needs, which has led to the emergence of cloud services as a more scalable and secure option over on-prem services.

Early on, infrastructure for all data required the investment of all-prem services, short for on-premises. Data centers, their applications, and network solutions required hardware on company grounds. This setup also required server upkeep and security measures on-location to keep all data maintained, available, and uncompromised.

Cloud services differ from on-prem services by functioning as online and dedicated data centers. This approach offloads the ongoing investment of on-prem hardware and security for that data to cloud providers. Cloud services provide scalable storage, ongoing maintenance, and industry-standard security as part of a long-term commitment to protecting and maintaining the data of an organization.

BENEFITS OF ON-PREM TO CLOUD MIGRATION

The benefits of migrating to the cloud from on-prem solutions include three major advantages that the cloud provides through efficiency: cost savings, performance, and security. A cloud provider for data saves money for an organization because the IT staff can focus on leveraging and scaling that cloud to meet organization goals, instead of juggling those goals with the required investments, maintenance, and security enforcement of on-prem hardware that drives up ongoing costs. The dedicated infrastructure of data centers in the cloud ensures top performance over a data center built around an office. Finally, the security standards enforced by cloud services reduces the chance of potential security breaches that expose on-prem hardware and applications to outside threats. These advantages provide major benefits to carrying out a migration of on-prem data to the cloud.

TYPES OF CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud services have various kinds of infrastructure to meet the specific needs of an organization and their data. Understanding the differences between these kinds of cloud services will help to better plan for a cloud migration strategy:

Public Cloud

Cloud services provided by a third-party vendor and accessible over the public internet are called public clouds. It is the most common type of cloud deployment that provides the strongest implementation of cloud benefits. Public clouds also come in a variety of types:

• Software as a Service (SaaS) – A cloud application provided over the internet, such as Dropbox, Salesforce or Microsoft365.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) – A cloud platform provided over the internet, allowing developers to build applications for the cloud service, such as OpenShift and Google App Engine.
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – A dedicated data center provided over the internet that is owned and maintained by the cloud provider. Examples include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

Private Cloud

When an organization owns their own dedicated data center that functions as a cloud service, it is called a private cloud. This approach requires additional investment for upkeep, scalability, and security, but some organizations prefer an in-house cloud solution for their data over using a public cloud.

Hybrid Cloud

When an organization combines public cloud services with on-prem services or private clouds, it is a called a hybrid cloud. An organization taking incremental steps for cloud migration may take this approach to minimize disruption and stay on-track for a long-term cloud migration goal.

Multi-Cloud

The use of multiple public cloud services for one organization is called a multi-cloud. Multi-cloud use can require more coordination between the public cloud services and the IT staff, but this approach offers redundancy measures, more contingency options, and a wider choice of applications for cloud usage.

HOW TO MIGRATE FROM ON-PREM TO CLOUD

Migration from on-prem data centers to the cloud requires a gradual, multi-step process with planning in advance. You want to define the data you want to migrate and why, plan for the needed precautions and servicing for a successful migration, carry out the migration, and move forward with updated standards for data operations to make the most of the cloud.

Step 1: Define Your Why

Stakeholders in the organization must know not only the data that should be migrated, but also the reason that data should migrate to the cloud in the first place. Because efficiency in cost, performance, and security is the primary goal for the data, contrasting the current cost and performance of on-prem services to what the cloud can offer is important. Tracking realized gains through key performance indicators (KPIs) against the performance baseline of your on-prem services will greatly assist in making your case in the long-term.

Step 2: Plan Your Move

To succeed in carrying out your migration from on-prem to the cloud, you need to plan a migration strategy that best fits both the needs of the organization and the type of cloud computing that will meet those needs. You will also want to account for common migration challenges. For an overview of the different migration strategies and the migration challenges that can occur, see Cloud Migration Strategies for A Seamless Transition.

Quantifying the data that should be moved and their current location(s) will be a critical part of the planning process. Classify360’s repositories can assist in this regard, with searches, models, and analyses to help parse out the data to migrate for a given data location.

Step 3: Migrate Your Data

Once a migration strategy has been planned and precautions have been taken to account for possible downtime, data backups, and secure migration methods, migration can finally begin. The goal of this step is to carry out the migration with as little disruption to the ongoing use of that data as possible. The potential size of data to migrate can be in the range of petabytes, so this step can often be a multi-phase process for larger organizations that will depend on assistance from the chosen cloud provider(s).

Classify360 can also play a role in the data migration using policies. After an analysis assigns a class to parsed data in a repository, a policy conducted on that class of data can take action to copy data at its current location to a new one, as well as delete the files at the old location. Organizations can configure these policies to suit their needs.

Step 4: Moving Forward After the Migration

Successful migration still requires the follow-through on implementing the cloud service to use the data through cloud applications to realize efficiency gains. IT staff trained in use of the cloud will be crucial in establishing new practices and protocol throughout the organization. Without such follow-through, a multi-phase migration can falter, and on-prem methods might be leaned upon by employees that can open security holes and create new silos of on-prem data. Stakeholders could even decide to reverse the migration due to ongoing problems, a worst-case scenario that can incur a heavy cost.

MIGRATION BEST PRACTICES

The following best practices for on-prem to cloud migration will help to ensure long-term benefits for the move. Best practices can vary for each organization’s specific needs. Consider the following as a starting point to determine those needs:

Train staff for the cloud

Staff must be trained for the cloud service early in the process. A knowledgeable, local team that understands the migration strategy and the needed implementation of the cloud can help the rest of the organization get on board with the cloud migration.

Make a comprehensive financial assessment

As mentioned earlier, assessing both the on-prem costs and the estimated costs to migrate to the cloud is an important step. This has to be as thorough as possible to make sure a given cloud strategy can deliver on efficiency and costs. For on-prem, you must assess the server, storage, network, and IT staff costs. For the cloud, you must assess the cost of not only the migration itself, but the ongoing costs of potential cloud service providers to host that migrated data. This provides the baseline and estimates you will need to determine your best migration plan.

Assess legacy challenges

The legacy formats of on-prem applications and their data can pose a serious challenge to migrate smoothly to cloud services. This greatly impacts early migration steps for planning a migration strategy. A review of the current hurdles for legacy data and applications that must be moved helps determine if they can stay as-is or require a repurchased or rebuilt application. Such requirements can impact both your costs and your KPIs.

Review data migration methods

The means to migrate data from on-prem data centers to cloud services can be complex. Whether you sync data between both on-prem and cloud databases, perform a one-way transfer to the cloud, or leverage a data-migration service also built in the cloud, the end goal remains the same: switch operations to the cloud service without disruption, data loss, or a breach in security. It is strongly recommended to research the data migration methods supported by prospective cloud providers as part of your migration strategy.

CLASSIFY360 CAN HELP

Classify360 has the data governance tools to help assess your on-prem data and take action to prepare your cloud migration. Book an intro call today to learn more about how Classify360 can help you and your organization.