What is cloud migration?

Alex Mihutski

Head of Database Migration Department, Ispirer Systems

Migrating to the cloud is a multifaceted process with many cornerstones. Before embarking on such a complicated process, companies should be aware of all the risks, challenges, and crucial steps for successful migration.

What is cloud migration?

Cloud migration is moving digital assets (applications, databases) from on-premises to the cloud or from cloud to cloud.

Starting with the global pandemic, migration to the cloud has become a widespread trend. It has become clear that the cloud offers cost-efficiency, agility, and innovation that bring huge value to the table.

This popular migration direction aims to move from outdated and inefficient infrastructure, such as aging servers, databases, and applications. Cloud computing offers a number of valuable potentials, which is why so many organizations are now turning to the cloud.

Types of cloud migration

There are various cloud migration types. Let’s review the main ones:

• Cloud adoption is one of the most widespread migration types, implying moving applications, databases, and entire infrastructures from on-premises to the cloud. Most often, companies choose the cloud adoption path to modernize infrastructure and adopt flexible environments without maintaining physical servers.
• Cloud-to-cloud migration. Moving databases or applications from one cloud provider to another has become common in recent years. Why do companies want to do this? Different cloud providers offer various features, services, and costs. So, organizations prefer cloud-to-cloud migration to take advantage of specific services and reduce cost savings.
• Hybrid cloud migration. There are several scenarios when companies migrate to multiple types of storage environments, deploying a hybrid cloud strategy. The strategy includes a combination of on-premises, cloud, and third-party cloud services to manage company data, applications, and workloads.
• Multi-cloud migration. At its core, a multi-cloud approach refers to using multiple cloud service providers to meet diverse business needs. Rather than relying solely on a single provider, organizations leverage a combination of public, private, or hybrid clouds to achieve greater resilience, flexibility and cost-efficiency.

Benefits of cloud migration

The great popularity of cloud migration is explained by the many benefits that companies receive. Let's consider the main ones, which include:

• Reduced hosting costs. Choosing the cloud means cutting expenses on maintaining physical servers. Cloud providers usually offer flexible subscription-based plans, which drastically reduce capital expenditures.
• Easy to manage. Physical servers always require additional equipment, such as cooling devices, electricity, space, and so on, to maintain them in working condition. Instead, hosting databases in the cloud frees companies from this burden.
• Disaster recovery is significant to all businesses but is historically expensive for smaller ones. The cloud providers help more organizations implement backup and recovery solutions that take less time and reduce costs.
• Better performance. Some businesses prefer cloud adoption because it enables them to achieve better performance. When hosted on the cloud, data no longer has to travel far from on-premises servers to reach users. The shorter path reduces latency and improves overall user experience.
• Highest security. The cloud offers greater security than data centers by storing sensitive data and apps in one place. Most cloud providers also keep unwanted traffic from accessing your data by rolling out regular security updates, freeing you from security threats and taking care of what matters to your business.

Challenges of cloud migration

Such a comprehensive process as migrating critical infrastructure to the cloud is not without its challenges along the way. The most vital and complex obstacles on the path to the cloud typically include:

• Data security. Migration from one storage to another always involves several risks associated with the safety of confidential data. A company from any field needs to safely transfer its data to prevent data leakage, fines, or damage to its reputation.
• Legacy system compatibility. If we are dealing with an outdated system created in the distant 1980s, it may simply be incompatible with cloud systems. To ensure a smooth transition from such a system to the cloud, additional tools and a team with extensive migration experience are needed. Ispirer Toolkit can easily handle such a task. The tool's smart core includes a massive set of conversion rules that can handle any migration task. Whether it's on-premises to on-premises migration or migration to AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, it doesn't matter where you need to migrate. Ispirer Toolkit can manage any migration project.
• Vendor lock-in. When switching to the cloud, companies should be aware of the lock-in problem. This is when a company finds it difficult to move from one cloud provider to another. For example, a business may experience difficulties when moving from AWS to Google Cloud as it becomes too invested in AWS features and services.
• Cost management. We're used to hearing that migrating to the cloud reduces costs in the long run. However, few people talk about how the initial costs can be extremely high. Organizations might start cloud migration, expecting immediate cost savings. However, the reality may include additional upfront costs for migration.
• Data migration plan. Creating a complete data migration plan is quite complex, as it requires considering various factors and answering a number of questions. What data needs to be migrated? When should it be migrated? In what order should the migration be done? In order to successfully migrate all the data, it is necessary to consider the various dependencies between databases and applications.
• Regulatory compliance. It goes without saying that when migrating to the cloud, you need to consider regulatory compliance. Different industries have different requirements.
• Data integrity. You need to be sure that no data is lost or corrupted during the move. It is essential to be aware of the best practices for data integrity.

Six cloud migration strategies

Selecting the most appropriate database migration strategy depends on the migration requirements, application types, and expected results.

The main migration strategies are:

• Lift-and-shift—moving databases with minimal to no changes. This strategy is the simplest to implement; however, it most often doesn’t reveal the full potential of cloud benefits.
• Replatforming—migrating applications with slight architecture changes to benefit from cloud features. Compared to the other strategies, this one has a perfect combination of speed and increased performance. Keep in mind that re-platforming may require some development effort.
• Refactoring—the complete rehaul of the application to get the most out of the cloud platform. Companies that choose refactoring maximize cloud benefits. But everything has its price, right? Refactoring is a time-consuming, challenging process that requires meticulous attention and deep development expertise.
• Replacing is moving to a different product, usually a different SaaS. This strategy helps reduce operational demands on in-house teams and simplify migration.
• Retiring—switching off those applications that are no longer useful or replacing legacy applications with SaaS solutions. The resulting savings might even boost your business case for applications ready for migration.
• Retaining—keeping specific applications in the current environment for business reasons. In fact, such a strategy could become a potential roadblock to moving to the cloud in the future.

Stages of cloud migration

Migrating digital assets to the cloud requires careful planning, application of best practices, and use of the best tools available. Like any other migration project, planning is everything.

Cloud migration is a massive project that may bring enormous challenges, which is why successful migration implies well-defined stages and deep expertise. We’ve defined the main stages of migrating to clouds.

1. Prepare. At the preparation stage, businesses define the main objectives of migration. It is essential to understand what you expect from moving to the cloud. Improved performance? Reduced cost savings? Increased agility or enhanced scalability? Or is everything combined? Most companies prefer to calculate the total cost of ownership of the current systems and compare them with the potential TCO of the applications in the cloud.

2. Plan. Once all the objectives are established, it is time to create a detailed roadmap for future migration. It is crucial to include all the details connected to the workloads that are going to be migrated and the order in which they will be migrated. It is also the right time to address any compliance and security requirements related to the migration. All the crucial factors also need to be considered at this step, including critical application data, legacy data, and application interoperability.

3. Migrate. This is the main stage in moving applications, databases, and other digital assets. Here is the time for applying the migration strategy, including lift-and-shift, refactoring, replatforming, or rebuilding applications. Migration is a multifaceted process that can be successfully completed only by experts in the field. Solutions for automating the migration can provide significant time savings. Ispirer Toolkit is a prime example of a solution that can provide cloud migration 2-3 times faster than rebuilding applications with other tools.

4. Operate. Organizations enter the operating phase once workloads have been successfully migrated to the cloud. This phase involves managing workloads in the cloud environment, including monitoring performance, managing resources, and maintaining security and compliance. During this phase, organizations should continue refining their operations based on feedback and performance data, making necessary adjustments to optimize cloud operations.

5. Optimize. The final stage is optimization. The main objective here is to find out how to improve the performance of company assets in the cloud environment. This can include refining cloud operations, identifying opportunities for cost savings, or implementing services to enhance performance.

How does Ispirer Toolkit can help you with cloud adoption?

Ispirer Toolkit is a solution that automates the entire database and application migration to AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. The intelligent migration engine of the expert system contains more than 70,000 conversion rules that ensure a smooth and hassle-free cloud migration. Check out the pricing of Ispirer Toolkit to get acquainted with the Ispirer offerings. You can also book a 30-minute demo with the Ispirer experts and discuss your future migration details.