Dive Deep into 6 R’s of Cloud Migration Strategies
“Modern-age businesses resort to cloud technology as their go-to computing point for efficiency and security benefits. Cloud migration involves strategies that help businesses to streamline their migration processes.”
Today’s transformation goals heavily depend on cloud initiatives. As cloud migration can make or break the entire cloud game, businesses are bound to fail if they are unable to acknowledge the criticalities of cloud migration. When strategies are framed right, migration can improve computing resource scalability, strengthen data security, enhance operational efficiency, speed up the deployment processes, facilitate collaboration, ensure business continuity, and more. To build a foolproof cloud migration plan, the focus must be on choosing the right strategy that meets the short and long term business objectives.
Re-hosting is commonly known as lift and shift adopted by organizations getting started on migration journeys. Re-platforming involves migrating applications to a cloud-managed platform without changing the core application architecture. Re-architecting also known as Re-factoring is when businesses leverage the power of cloud environments to enhance the app. Re-purchasing is moving to a SaaS platform. Re-tiring is removing outdated apps to drive overall efficiency and effectiveness. Retaining guides internal teams to retain apps on-premise. This blog will talk about the 6 strategies for migrating applications to the cloud,
Re-Hosting — Re-hosting involves redeploying the existing apps to an IaaS environment. Servers, data and apps are moved from the existing hosting environment to the public cloud. Apps are redeployed to a cloud-based environment, and modifications are done to the app’s host configuration. Rehosting is considered to be a seamless transition methodology as once the apps move to the cloud they can easily get redesigned to meet the needs. Enterprises can realize cost savings with re-hosting and running servers on the pay-as-you-go public cloud is a low resistance migration strategy.
Pro tip — Re-hosting is best suited for organizations that indulge in large-scale migrations as re-hosting goes well with extensive scale migrations.
Re-Platforming — Re-platforming (lift-and-optimize) helps businesses to migrate the apps to a cloud-managed platform without making changes in the main application architecture. It helps businesses to run apps on the cloud provider’s platforms and includes replacing the configuration of the app’s architecture without getting into the developer cycles. Developers can reuse the known resources with backward compatibility as an added advantage of re-platforming. Re-platforming is gaining momentum in the PaaS market. Re-platforming involves upgrading an app from its existing platform to get it to run on the cloud by maintaining its necessary factors, and existing functionality.
Pro tip — Re-platforming is best suited for organizations that have valuable but not critical applications.
Re-Architecting — Re-architecting or Re-factoring (lift-and-shift) is all about smooth running of existing apps in the cloud platforms using the services provided by the cloud provider. This strategy is needed when the finalized apps cannot run directly on the cloud platform. In case of custom apps, partial or full code changes may be needed to run it appropriately with desired performance. Rearchitecting needs an understanding of the cloud platforms along with app’s data, functionality and performance. Apps that might have begun the journey as re-hosted migrations can also be re-architected later.
Pro tip — Re-architecting is best suited for organizations that are looking forward to developing the software within the Cloud.
Re-Purchasing — Re-purchasing (drop-and-shop) involves moving to a SaaS platform. It is an excellent way to access cloud-based SaaS that is customized to the business needs by the cloud provider. Organizations can change the existing apps in use for a new cloud-based platform or service. It includes discarding the old app platforms with a goal to upgrade or purchase new ones. Re-purchasing helps businesses to save on staffing, app storage and maintenance costs. The cloud service providers that offer cloud-based SaaS services favor this strategy.
Pro tip — Re-purchasing is best suited for organizations to migrate from on-premise to a SaaS platform removing the need of focusing on maintenance or updates.
Retiring — Retiring helps organizations to explore every single app to make decisions related to which app needs to be migrated. If management considers an app is not worth migrating to the cloud, it is either downsized or eliminated. In the initial planning stages of cloud migration, which part of the enterprise IT portfolio is required and which isn’t. Retiring unwanted apps can help the teams to divert more time, and allocate a better budget on the pivotal cloud resources that can contribute in improving and increasing efficiency. Organizations can get rid of the hassles related to computing, storage, architecture to streamline the infrastructure.
Pro tip — Retiring is best suited for organizations that have obsolete apps and looking forward to achieving cost-effectiveness, efficiency and scalability.
Retaining — Retaining (or hybrid model) focuses on the apps that don’t need to be migrated to the cloud. It involves holding back the app as the migration might consume a significant amount of time in re-architecting to fit into the cloud or is simply a costly affair. Cloud has caught a lot of momentum still there can be some convincing reasons to retain some applications on-premise. Cloud experts can assist the organization’s in-house teams in dealing with change management. This strategy means to ‘revisit’ and continue using the apps as they are.
Pro tip — Retaining is best suited for organizations that have solid reasons to keep the apps as they are.
Conclusion — Cloud migration strategies have become significant to modern businesses to streamline the transition process.
Cloud computing proves to be beneficial regardless of the type of IT environment within the enterprise. It is evident that the transition of existing apps to the cloud offers innumerable business benefits. Not all applications are meant for the cloud, some are better off to be run in the traditional setup, and others need to be strategically transitioned to the cloud. Cloud migration is a pivotal move that brings IT, management, and operations teams together. Consider these R’s of cloud transformation as your pivotal tool for business to give a structure to your decision-making process and to get the most out of your migration journey. Said that, strategies are important as migration to the cloud has to be practical, thoughtful and step-by-step not far-fetched, reckless or all at once!