Laut Gartner 90% of businesses will adopt a hybrid cloud approach by 2027. If your organization still uses software and applications stored in your physical location, have you considered on-prem to cloud migration?
In this post, we shall discuss what cloud migration is, why you should consider it, and how to successfully move to the cloud.
What Is On-Prem to Cloud Migration?
On-premise (or on-prem) to cloud migration refers to the process of moving business data, applications, and resources from servers, databases, and computers located on-site to the cloud.
We’re being specific about the definition because simply calling it cloud migration might be misleading.
On its own, cloud migration might also refer to moving your data from one cloud provider to another. What we want to talk about is specifically moving your operations, which includes software, IT services, and data, from within your physical control to a location that is not your own private server.
Benefits of Migrating to the Cloud
If you’ve been operating successfully from your premises, you might wonder what you’d get from migrating to the cloud. Here are some of the benefits you can expect:
Accessibility
Work flexibility is one of the benefits most companies offer to their employees, especially when they leverage cloud solutions. However, this can be difficult if you only use on-premise infrastructure. Moving to the cloud allows your workforce to operate effectively from anywhere—home or office—utilizing cloud resources. It also opens up opportunities for hiring talent that is not physically located near your offices.
Performance
It’s easier to access all your resources when they’re in the cloud. Most cloud service providers try to reduce latency for their clients by setting up data centers in different locations. Even if your physical location is facing disruptions, your team can still access work resources as long as they have a device with an internet connection. Plus, if you need additional resources, you don’t need to set them up yourself.
Skalierbarkeit
You can accommodate changes in demand more easily with cloud services. If there is a spike, you can sign up for more resources and pay accordingly. Similarly, when you don’t need as many resources, you can scale down and reduce your expenses.
Kosteneffizienz
Technology assets lose value over time, so buying and setting up your own infrastructure gives you no benefits other than having complete control over them. With the cloud infrastructure, you effectively rent out resources and pay for only what you use.
Security and Compliance Support
All the big cloud service providers have their reputations to protect, which is why they invest heavily in security. In fact, unless you’re a large enterprise, chances are that you can’t afford as much security as they inherently offer. This means when you use their services, part of your data security compliance requirements are already set up within the infrastructure.
When and Why Would You Need to Move to the Cloud?
Yes, the cloud has some great advantages. However, if your organization has been successfully working with your on-prem IT infrastructure, you might wonder why you’d need to migrate at all. Here are some situations that could trigger a business to consider cloud migration.
When You Need to Scale Up
If your business experiences sudden or unexpected growth, your existing infrastructure might not be sufficient to bear the extra workload. While you could add hardware to cope with the increased demand, moving to the cloud might be more feasible in the long run.
Using cloud services, including software-as-a-service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), or platform-as-a-service (PaaS), make it easier for you to deal with growth volumes you hadn’t planned for. For one, it’s simply a matter of requesting more resources to match the demand, and you can “switch them off” when they aren’t needed. For another, it’s usually cheaper than buying more hardware.
When You Need to Refresh Your Infrastructure
Any software or hardware you use will eventually become obsolete as technologies evolve. If you’ve reached a point where you need to upgrade much of your infrastructure, it might be time to migrate from on-premises to a private cloud.
This move will save you money in terms of hardware purchase and training. It will also reduce some of your responsibilities because maintenance and upkeep, as well as upgrades, are part of the service provider’s offerings.
When You Need to Cut Costs
As your business grows, you may find your capital expenses ballooning as you buy more hardware. Migrating from on-prem to the cloud lets you convert that capital expense into your operating expense.
Here’s how: Most cloud service providers work on a pay-as-you-go model, where you only pay for the features and resources you use. If you were working on-premise, you’d have to buy the related infrastructure, regardless of whether you need it all the time or not.
With cloud migration, you can reduce your upfront costs and expenses and pay a monthly subscription fee which depends on how much you use. These are often significantly less than the price you would pay for a corresponding infrastructure upgrade.
When You Start Facing Operational Challenges
To properly maintain your infrastructure in-house, you require a trained team of engineers. As your technology requirements grow, you might need experts in different software and hardware. Without this expertise, minor technical issues can become major roadblocks.
This includes data and cyber security. Without a security team, you might find it challenging to keep your business information, networks, and applications safe from threat actors.
With on-prem to cloud migration, you can outsource these needs to your service provider. All your team needs to be good at is what your business is known for; all the technical upkeep is taken care of externally. Your cloud provider will also help you with disaster recovery, as they have backup servers, so your service is not disrupted.
When You Need to Innovate Quickly
In today’s world, if you want to be competitive, you might be required to change direction or introduce new services and features as soon as there’s a demand. If you’re slow, you will lose out to your competitors.
However, managing the development, testing, and deployment of new applications and services can be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. This is where cloud services can be very useful. You can sign up for whatever resources you require almost instantly. The setup already exists; you can simply “plug and play.”
However, no matter how many problems on-prem-to-cloud migration solves for you, it still must be a move you have to plan carefully. First, you need to determine which type of migration you are going to carry out.
Types of Cloud Migration
Which type of migration you opt for depends on several factors, such as your company’s goals, your current infrastructure, and other requirements. Your main priority might be to keep costs down, keep application modifications to a minimum, or take advantage of certain cloud-native features. Whether it’s a quick transition or a major overhaul of your infrastructure, there’s a cloud migration project type for you.
Rehosting
Also known as lift-and-shift or physical-to-cloud (P2C), rehosting is the simplest cloud migration strategy. It’s almost an on-prem to cloud data migration where the processes and applications remain mostly unchanged, and all that changes is the location. Since no—or very little—modifications are required, this type of migration is relatively quick and simple, but doesn’t leverage cloud features to a great extent.
Refactoring
The refactoring, or re-architecting, migration type requires some modification to your applications, whether you are rewriting or redesigning them to make them cloud-native. This helps you take advantage of advanced cloud features to improve performance and make your operations more easily scalable. However, it takes more time—and costs more—than simply rehosting.
Replatforming
In terms of work required, replatforming falls somewhere between rehosting and refactoring. You make some changes to your applications to improve performance or compatibility with the cloud, but it’s not a complete redesign. This way, you get more benefits from your cloud environment than rehosting but with less effort than refactoring.
Replacing
Instead of migrating or modifying your applications to make them suitable for the cloud environment, you can replace them with SaaS solutions. For that reason, this type of cloud migration is also called “shifting to SaaS”. This approach is useful if you want to replace your outdated legacy systems with something that is modern and scalable. While this method can be the most disruptive, as it requires data migration and significant changes to your workflow, it provides cost savings and improved functionality in the long term, especially when considering the different migration strategies available.
Steps for a Successful Cloud Migration From On-Premises Infrastructure
Once you’ve decided on the type of migration you want, the next stage is to implement it. Of course, this stage requires even more thought and strategic thinking. Here are the steps you need to go through for a successful migration.
Plan Your Migration
While we’ve discussed the types of migrations in the previous section, this is the stage where you would decide which one to consider, depending on the level of cloud integration you want. Use your migrations goals—scalability, cost efficiency, enhanced performance, etc.—to determine how to move forward.
Divide your migration plan into phases. Determine what you want to migrate first, preferably the least important data or systems. This will tell you how feasible it is to move to the cloud and inform you of any gaps in your process without affecting mission-critical data and applications. This is also the step where you should decide whether you want a single- or multi-cloud approach.
Next, assess your on-premises systems, including servers, applications, and dependencies. Evaluate performance, prioritize workloads, and address any prerequisites like software updates or hardware upgrades to ensure a smooth migration to the cloud.
Finally, assign a migration architect who will oversee and manage your plan to keep it in line with business goals and performance objectives as you learn more about cloud technologies.
Choose the Right Cloud Provider and Approach
While there might be several cloud providers offering the services you require, you need to find one that aligns with your requirements. Look for the ones that give you the right combination of features that you have prioritized, whether they are cost, compliance, global reach, scalability, or disaster recovery options.
Unless you are quite certain the provider is the right one for you, look out for potential vendor lock-in. This is when your operations become so enmeshed with the service provider that you can’t move to another one.
Cloud cost calculators can help you estimate your expenses and compare them with your current infrastructure. This will help you refine your strategy further.
Manage Security and Compliance
Certain industries have stringent data protection requirements, but everyone has to comply with the general regulations of their jurisdictions. Make sure you have adequate security measures in place, like data encryption, firewalls, and identity and access management (IAM) systems.
You also need a plan for transferring sensitive data during the migration process. Once your migration is complete, you will need monitoring tools that track security events and ensure that you remain compliant.
Test and Execute Your Migration Incrementally
Before you go all in, verify the efficacy of your plan with a pilot migration. Move a small subset of your applications and workload to check the process and identify any compatibility or performance issues. This will reduce your risks when you do the actual migration and allow you to refine your plan, tools, and timelines.
Once you’ve refined your plan after testing, begin migrating in phases. Always start with the least important processes first to avoid disruptions. Using automated tools offered by your cloud provider can help streamline the process to move data, but monitor your progress carefully and address any issues as soon as they arise.
Move the critical workloads only when you’ve ensured the non-critical ones have been transitioned without issues.
Validate and Optimize Post-Migration
Just because your data and applications were successfully transitioned to the cloud doesn’t guarantee they perform as expected. Thoroughly test all applications and workloads to ensure everything works as intended. If you’re completely migrating to the cloud platform, this is when you would decommission the old systems.
Establish Ongoing Management
Just as you’d evaluate your on-premises resources to see if they are compatible with your business needs and goals, you must also test your cloud environment. Cloud management tools can help you monitor performance, resource usage, and cost. Conduct regular audits to ensure your systems are secure and you are compliant with regulatory requirements. You can get more out of your new infrastructure if you train your employees to manage it effectively.
On-Prem to Cloud Migration Tools
You can simplify and automate your move to the cloud with migration tools from cloud service providers or use third-party ones. Some of the common on-prem to cloud migration tools include:
- AWS Migration Hub
- AWS Server Migration Service
- Azure Migrate
- Google Cloud Migration Center
- CloudEndure
- Carbonite Migrate
The Challenges of Migrating From On-Prem to Cloud
While there are several benefits of moving operations to the cloud, you need to be aware of where things can go wrong. The good news is that these can be mitigated during the planning stage.
Here are some of the challenges you might face when you migrate from on-premises to the cloud.
- Cost Management: Moving to the cloud can potentially have hidden costs that aren’t apparent during a cursory price check. Expenses like data transfer fees or operational costs can add up, so always determine the total cost of ownership (TCO) before you commit to moving data to the cloud.
- Vendor Lock-In: If you rely too heavily on a technology or service provided by your new CSP, moving to another vendor might be difficult later.
- Managing Legacy Applications: If you use older systems that were designed before cloud technology became popular, they might have to be redesigned to be suitable for their new environment.
- Data Security and Compliance: While CSPs provide security features, they are for the cloud infrastructure, not for your data and workflows. You are responsible for that.
Migrate Confidently with BigID
Our Datenintelligenzplattform helps you with data privacy, Sicherheit, governance, and compliance. BigID can help you clean, prepare and minimize data for a smooth transition to the cloud.
The platform also helps you manage data in the cloud by inventorying, mapping, and organizing it for better visibility and security. If you’re planning to migrate from on-prem to the cloud, find out how we can help you: Book a 1:1 demo today!
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