3 Necessary Steps for a Painless Cloud Migration 

So, your organization has decided to take the plunge and do away with (at least partially) on-premise, legacy infrastructure and migrate data to modern infrastructure in the cloud. You may be wondering where to start or what steps to present your team with to move forward. This week, we will share 3 steps for a painless cloud migration, so your organization does not get any surprises thrown at it! 

Step 1: Plan and Prepare 

Before even preparing or migrating, set time aside with your internal stakeholders to assess current workloads and infrastructure. With cloud technology, there is not a “one size fits all” approach. One of the major benefits cloud technologies allows organizations is that you only pay for services used. The time allotted will help your organization determine the goals for the migration while creating a roadmap for the move. To maximize efficiency and minimize cost, this step is essential. Curious about how to frame migrating to the cloud to your executive leadership? Dataprise has you covered with one of our top blogs from 2022. 

Step 2: Migrate and Test 

Once the team is on the same page, next it’s time for the migration to begin. There are a couple of different paths your organization can take to get to the cloud so let’s jump into all of them: 

SaaS Applications with Cloud Storage for Backup 

One partial route an organization can take is by purchasing SaaS applications to use the cloud storage they provide as a backup. O365, Salesforce, and Quikbooks are examples of SaaS applications with this capability. Since the shift to a hybrid work environment, trends are showing that organizations are less likely to invest in heavy on-premise infrastructure in favor of cloud storage because of the flexibility it can provide to its hybrid workforce. 

Hybrid Cloud 

In some circumstances, it may be impossible to migrate 100% of your infrastructure to the cloud. Occasionally, organizations will have legacy applications that are critical to the business – but because of how they were set up and how long ago they were set up, they will not be able to run on newer versions of software. That’s where the hybrid cloud comes into play. This model will allow the legacy applications to stay in on-premise data centers but it also provides a line of business applications in, for example, Azure Cloud. 

“Lift and Shift” 

Over the past year, the “lift and shift” model has become the most prominently used. It allows organizations to move an existing application and the data associated with it to the cloud with minimal or no redesigning. 

With the migration completed and your workloads in the cloud, next up is continuous testing. This is an important part that you will not want to skip! With any type of disaster in your life, would you rather know exactly what to do, right away, or would you rather open up a manual for the first time and have to learn what to do while simultaneously mitigating the disaster? 

Step 3: Optimize and Maintain 

After migration comes optimization and maintenance. Once your migration is complete, your organization can focus on optimizing your workloads for the cloud. This could involve fine-tuning your cloud resources to meet your exact needs and reduce costs. 

With anything in life, proper maintenance is key to smoothly operating systems. It is important to keep your newly created cloud environment up-to-date and secure. Maintenance tasks can include applying patches and updates, monitoring performance, and making the necessary changes to ensure your workloads run smoothly. 

2023 is expected to be one of the largest years for cloud services to date, so it is critical to ensure your organization is prepared and well-educated in the event this is in the future. Dataprise is proud to specialize in cloud services and we encourage you to check out our Fully Managed Cloud offerings.