The first step in Cloud Migration involves assessing the organization's current IT infrastructure, applications, and business requirements. This assessment helps determine which workloads are suitable for migration to the cloud, which may require modification or refactoring, and which should remain on-premises. Organizations also develop a migration strategy and roadmap that outlines the goals, scope, timeline, and key activities for the migration.
Organizations identify and catalog all applications, data, and dependencies that need to be migrated to the cloud. This includes assessing application architectures, interdependencies, data storage requirements, and integration points with other systems.
Before migrating workloads to the cloud, organizations may need to prepare their infrastructure by upgrading hardware, software, and network components as necessary. This may involve optimizing application performance, addressing security vulnerabilities, and ensuring compatibility with cloud platforms and services.
Organizations transfer data from on-premises storage systems to cloud storage services using various migration techniques such as bulk data transfer, database replication, or data synchronization. Data migration may involve ensuring data integrity, maintaining data consistency, and minimizing downtime during the migration process.
Organizations migrate applications and workloads to cloud-based environments using techniques such as lift-and-shift, re-platforming, or refactoring. Lift-and-shift involves migrating applications with minimal modifications, while re-platforming involves adapting applications to run on cloud-native platforms and services. Refactoring involves redesigning or rewriting applications to take full advantage of cloud capabilities such as scalability, elasticity, and microservices architecture.
Organizations conduct testing and validation activities to ensure that migrated applications and workloads function as expected in the cloud environment. This includes performance testing, compatibility testing, integration testing, and user acceptance testing to identify and address any issues or discrepancies.
After migration, organizations optimize their cloud environments to improve performance, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. This may involve rightsizing resources, implementing automation, optimizing configurations, and monitoring performance metrics to identify opportunities for improvement.
Organizations provide ongoing support and management for cloud-based environments, including monitoring, troubleshooting, and maintenance activities. This may involve implementing cloud management tools, establishing governance policies, and providing training for IT staff to ensure the smooth operation of cloud resources.
