Migrating to the cloud is tough—no two ways about it. There are many factors which require consideration before you begin this tumultuous journey. While cloud infrastructure provides scalability, agility and cost efficiency, not all applications are suitable to be deployed on a cloud-based environment.
Over our short time in this business, we have observed several issues and challenges that businesses usually face while migrating their on-premise application to the cloud or from one cloud environment to another. It takes hours, at time days, to make an app fully compatible with the new technology.
The reason is simple: Cloud technology is still relatively a newcomer. Furthermore, a large number of business applications were built for traditional technologies. A vacuum is thus created which is reducing by the day but the progress is slow. This leads to many hindrances and dead-ends in deployment.
Utilizing cloud servers means you are shifting from in-house infrastructure to an external computing environment. For CIOs this is a tough operation to execute as they delegate their control to some extent, yet following these steps will ease the process.
Do your homework:
Migration to cloud is just like moving from one country to another. There is a procedure through which you have to pass before calling a new country your home. Same logic applies here, you should try to study about the different options related to app migration. This requires all the necessary considerations and preparation over a wide range of issues. There be might a need to changes codes or have a comprehensive security procedure in place that secures and backups your data during and after moving your application to the cloud.
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Bring Everyone on Board:
While moving your application to cloud, everyone from CIO to Operational Manager (even your customers) must be on the same page. You need to understand the feasibility of cloud migration; the architecture of your applications; the downtime you might face; and the impacts on application performance and SLAs till you get live. All of these must be properly decided with a rollback strategy in case of failure.
Create the Environment:
Enterprises have two paths while moving their application on cloud i.e. Public and Private Clouds. At times, a mixed solution of both private and public cloud is created keeping in mind security and cost compliance. Similarly, you need to deploy Virtual Machines (VMs) and storage that will support your application. Also, you need to understand how cloud computing works and decide the path to follow. You can either choose to recreate the application from scratch by acquiring cloud-based hardware and software under Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS); or customize your workload on a developed environment by using Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS); or use a ready-made application that suits your requirements as in the case of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
Evaluate the Cost:
If not properly planned, the cloud server will generate a hefty bill at the end of the month money eating monster. The migration and running costs should be properly analyzed while keeping achievable savings into consideration. TCO/ROI (Total Cost of Ownership/Return on Investment) must be calculated with keeping elements of Capex (Server, Storage, and Network), Opex (Personnel, Bandwidth, and Maintenance) and Overheads (Migration Costs) into account.
A cloud server also requires management of ongoing operations like monitoring application performance, up-scaling servers, industry compliance, security certificates, etc. Depending your need, budgets for all these cost must be kept in accordance.
Get an Expert Opinion:
Get in touch with cloud experts to know about your application migration and tools that can help you ease the process. At Cloudways, we have been providing customized solutions for cloud migration and infrastructure planning and deployment. Our support team makes sure they are always there for you to provide consultation.
Mehdi KaramAli
Mehdi KaramAli worked as a Digital Content Producer for Cloudways. Apart from exploring new trends in the cloud, he keenly follows startups and is passionate about mountaineering.
