Cloud Migration Strategies, Challenges & Hacks: A Playbook for Smart Cloud Migration

This strategy allows you to shift your applications to the cloud and modify or rewrite their architecture to take full advantage of cloud-native features and capabilities. In this strategy you gain improved agility, performance and scalability than you achieve in your legacy systems. It involves breaking down monolithic applications into microservices or redesigning certain components. Some of the major reasons where the refactor/re-architect strategy is applicable:

• When it’s difficult to test your legacy applications it eventually impacts the quality and delivery of new application features and fixes. By embracing this strategy, you can easily integrate automated testing tools and enhance test coverage.
• When your technical team knows less about how to maintain the legacy applications or if the source code is non-existent.
• When you have a legacy application that fails to meet your customer’s needs and demands.
• When your legacy applications fail to fulfill the demands of the business because of its constraints and exorbitant price.
  

  7 Rs of Cloud Migration

5. Retire

This involves identifying applications or components that are no longer needed and can be safely retired. This declutters your migration process and reduces unnecessary complexity. Some of the common scenarios where the retire strategy is applicable:

• When you intend to cut the application hosting and maintenance cost
• When you are operating an application that uses an OS or component that is no longer supported, it reduces security risks
• When retaining or moving the application to the cloud has no business value

6. Retain

Some applications might not be suitable for migration due to various reasons such as regulatory requirements or technical limitations. In this strategy, you could choose to retain these applications in your current on-premises environment. Some of the common scenarios where the retain strategy is applicable:

• For security reasons, where you want to retain applications to maintain data residency demands.
• If you recently upgraded your current system, it might be worth postponing the migration until the next technical refresh.
• When you need to retain an application in order to migrate one or more other applications first.

7. Risk Management

While not always explicitly mentioned as one of the 7 Rs, risk management is an important aspect of any migration strategy. This involves identifying potential risks associated with the migration, such as data security, compliance, and performance issues, and having plans in place to mitigate these risks.

Roadmap for Migrating to Cloud

Migrating to the cloud involves a series of strategic steps to ensure a smooth transition of your organization’s IT infrastructure and applications from on-premises to cloud environments. While the specifics of the roadmap may vary based on your organization’s needs, here’s a general outline of the process:

1. Assessment and Planning

• Understand why you want to migrate to the cloud. This could include factors like scalability, cost-efficiency, agility, and improved disaster recovery
• Identify which applications are suitable for migration based on factors such as compatibility, complexity, and data sensitivity
• Determine the volume and nature of data that needs to be migrated, including structured and unstructured data
• Choose the appropriate cloud provider(s) based on factors like services offered, geographic presence, compliance requirements, and pricing models

2. Proof of Concept (PoC)

Select a small, non-critical application or workload to migrate as proof of concept. This helps you validate your migration strategy, identify challenges, and gain experience with the cloud platform.

3. Design and Architecture

• Plan how your applications and services will be architected in the cloud. Consider factors like availability, scalability, security, and compliance
• Define the network architecture, including virtual networks, subnets, and connectivity options

4. Data Migration

• Determine the appropriate data migration strategy (lift and shift, re-platforming, refactoring, etc.) based on the application’s complexity and requirements
• Execute the data migration process, ensuring data integrity and minimal downtime

5. Application Migration

• Deploy and configure the necessary infrastructure components in the cloud environment
• Migrate application code, configurations, and dependencies
• Test the migrated applications thoroughly to ensure they function as expected in the cloud environment

6. Testing and Validation

• Conduct various types of testing, including functional testing, performance testing, security testing, and disaster recovery testing
• Address any issues or discrepancies that arise during testing

7. Training and Skill Development

• Provide training to your IT team on cloud-specific tools, services, and best practices
• Build the necessary skills within your organization to manage and monitor the cloud environment effectively

8. Security and Compliance

• Implement robust security measures, including identity and access management, encryption, and compliance controls
• Ensure that your migration aligns with industry and regulatory compliance requirements

9. Optimization

• Continuously monitor and optimize your cloud resources for cost efficiency and performance
• Take advantage of cloud-native services to enhance the capabilities of your applications

8 Cloud Migration Challenges and Ways to Mitigate Them

Now that you understand the benefits of cloud migration and how to kick-start the migration process, let’s check on some of the common challenges every organization faces and the best ways to mitigate them.

1. Lack of cloud migration strategy

Challenge:

You will fail to garner the desired results when you dive into the migration process without a well-hatched strategy. This may result in resentment that heaps of money and effort were invested in a failing solution.

Mitigation:

The only way to overcome this challenge is to plan every possible result. Before mapping out the plan ask questions such as these: What are my end goals? Did I set the right expectations for my team? Did I check all the platform dependencies and carry out an out-and-out risk evaluation? This will help you in optimizing performance and accomplishing your migration goals.

2. Data Security and Compliance

Challenge:

Ensuring data security and compliance during migration and after it’s in the cloud. There’s a high chance for data breaches to occur due to misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, or attacks targeting cloud resources. If sensitive data is not secured properly, it could be exposed to unauthorized access. The risk is quite common when data is migrated through unsecured networks.

Mitigation:

Evaluate the types of data being migrated and the associated risks to determine the appropriate security measures. Using encrypted data and Identity and Access Management (IAM) at rest and in migration can go a long way in safeguarding your data against intervention and unauthorized access. Continuously monitor cloud resources for any vulnerabilities and keep yourself updated with their security features and updates.

3. Skill Gap and Training

Challenge:

Lack of expertise in managing and optimizing cloud resources.

Inadequate understanding of cloud services and configurations can result in misconfigurations which in turn can end in data breaches, downtime, or compliance violations. If the in-house team is left unprepared to embrace the changes, you will fail to garner results from the migration process.

Mitigation:

Providing training to IT teams, hiring cloud experts or partnering with industry experts can help bridge the skills gap and ensure successful cloud migration. Start off with smaller cloud projects to gradually build skills and confidence before divulging into complex migrations to maximize the benefits.

4. Application Compatibility

Challenge:

Legacy applications might not be compatible with the cloud environment. It is significant to map existing applications based on LAN/WAN perimeters which can be a backbreaking work for the organizations. If the mapping is not done correctly, it may lead to performance and latency issues in the cloud environment.

Mitigation:

In order to overcome the application compatibility challenges, you can re-structure or re-architect your existing applications to fit in well with the cloud environment. You can opt for containerization or Platform as a Service (PaaS) to enhance compatibility and support.

5. Downtime and Disruption

Challenge:

Minimizing downtime and service disruption during migration. Downtime, disruptions, and loss of functionalities are common events when migrating from on-premises to a cloud environment. Though it’s considered to be a minor challenge by most organizations, it may lead to customer dissatisfaction, loss of sales, customer churn and a decline in employee productivity.

Mitigation:

Plan migration during off-peak hours, implement hybrid solutions for gradual migration and conduct thorough testing before going live.

To overcome this challenge, you should conduct a detailed evaluation of your existing environment to pinpoint possible points of failure and chalk up an all-inclusive strategy that minimizes downtime, testing and rollback procedures.

6. Data Transfer and Bandwidth

Challenge:

Transferring large amounts of data to the cloud can be time-consuming and expensive.

Mitigation:

Addressing data migration and bandwidth challenges requires careful planning, the right tools and strategies, and consideration of factors like data volume, network limitations, and business requirements. Use data compression, leverage offline data transfer methods, and prioritize critical data for transfer.

7. Cost Management

Challenge:

Due to the dynamic nature of cloud resources, pre-planning cost management can be a challenging task. Unlike traditional IT infrastructure, cloud resources can easily be scaled up or down as per your business demands. It may lead to overspending if not carefully managed. On top of that, you may have to allocate more budget for data transfer fees, storage fees and other hidden charges that may pop up from time to time.

Mitigation:

To mitigate these challenges, you should adopt robust cost management practices, such as regular monitoring, resource optimization, implementing budget controls, utilizing cost management tools, and educating teams about cloud cost dynamics.

8. Vendor Lock-In

Challenge:

Avoiding vendor-specific technologies that might lead to dependency. This challenge arises when migration from utilized cloud service platforms (CSPs) to other platforms becomes intricate and pricey. It can be because of factors such as proprietary APIs, data structures, and custom configurations used by CSPs.

Mitigation:

To mitigate vendor lock-in, opt for open standards and architectures for your applications. Choose technologies that promote interoperability across different platforms. Build applications with portability in mind and require zero to no re-architecture. By following these practices, you enhance flexibility and avoid becoming dependent on one CSP.

Final Thoughts

Despite the different challenges associated with cloud migration, its benefits outweigh the challenges. Cloud computing offers enhanced operations efficiency, cost savings, faster time-to-market and access to robust tools and trending technologies, which may not be feasible with traditional infrastructure. Comprehending each challenge and mitigating them can help you leverage cloud computing and its benefits. With a proven strategy and the rightly skilled team in place, you can successfully navigate the migration process and achieve instant results.

Do you need help with cloud migration? Zuci has a team of battle-tested cloud experts who can help you evaluate risks, strategize better plans and ensure a smooth and successful cloud transition.

Contact us today and let us know your problem statement. We can whip up a workable solution to work things through.