Cloud Migration Strategies For Atlanta Businesses

Cloud Migration Strategies For Atlanta Businesses

Cloud migration rates have been soaring since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In 2020 alone, more than 61% of organizations moved their workloads to the cloud. According to recent predictions, the global cloud computing market will grow at a CAGRI rate of 17.5% to reach $461 billion by the last quarter of 2025. If you are an Atlanta business planning to move your digital resources to the cloud this year, developing a robust cloud migration approach is the first step towards a successful move. The cloud migration experts at Centerpoint IT provide in-depth strategies to migrate your assets successfully.

What Is Cloud Migration?

Cloud migration involves moving software, data, and all other supporting architecture and applications from on-premise to the cloud. Cloud migration allows business software to be more resilient, available, and scalable.

Types of Cloud Migration Strategies

There are five cloud migration techniques that most organizations looking to migrate to the cloud often consider. Let’s take a look at a brief description of each:

• Rehost: Rehosting involves leveraging infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). With this strategy, you simply redeploy your current applications and data on the cloud server. It is an easy method ideal for enterprises less familiar with cloud environments. It may also be an ideal technique where you encounter challenges modifying the code, and you prefer migrating your applications intact.
• Refactor: Refactoring involves tweaking and optimizing applications for the cloud. It involves using the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) model. With this process, the core architecture of applications remains unchanged. However, some adjustments are made to ensure better migration and the maximized use of cloud-based tools.
• Revise: As the name suggests, revising involves building upon the previous strategies while making some significant changes to the architecture and code of the systems and infrastructure being moved to the cloud. The modifications help optimize applications to ensure maximum usage of services available on the cloud. Since the technique may require introducing significant code changes, this strategy demands robust planning and an in-depth understanding of the entire migration process.
• Rebuild: Rebuilding involves deleting the existing code base and replacing it with a new code. Undoubtedly, this is a complex process that needs massive resources, skills, and time. Rebuilding is often considered if a company’s existing solutions can’t meet a business’s changing demands.
• Replace: Replacing takes a similar approach as rebuilding. However, you won’t need to redevelop your own native application from zero with this strategy. The process involves migrating to a prebuilt application provided by third-party vendors. It is essential to keep in mind that with this strategy, you only migrate your data. Everything else, including your system, becomes new.

Cloud Migration Best Practices

Cloud migration is undoubtedly a complex process that must be done correctly and with the ideal resources. It is crucial that you clearly understand what you are migrating and why you are doing, so before you make any move. The following are the typical steps to follow when migrating your assets to the cloud.

Determine Your Goals

To decide on the best cloud migration strategy, you need to determine the specific needs of your organization. The strategy you choose is mainly dependent on factors like enhancing efficiency, saving money, and reducing downtime. Start your migration journey by coming up with both short-term and long-term goals. Your goals should be flexible enough to accommodate changes introduced by new technologies over time.

Plan Your Cloud Migration

Once you have decided on the best technique to use, determine the applications, services data, and hardware running within the system to help you decide how and when each piece of the system moves. Undoubtedly, you are less likely to move your entire infrastructure as a whole to the cloud. A good practice is to start with the less critical components and move the most crucial ones only once you have a robust support system in place. This ensures minimal disruption to critical business functions.

Come up with a Functioning Disaster Recovery Plan

The cloud migration process is a complex process with many risks. Even with the most robust strategy, unforeseen downtimes and challenges could still occur. Have a robust and foolproof DRP in place and ensure you keep it updated.

Train Employees

Moving to the cloud introduces significant changes to in-house tech. Whether you are moving your legacy infrastructure to the cloud for the first time or not, you need to train your employees to work with a specific cloud provider. The training should be an ongoing event since there are constant updates involved.

Test and Measure Migration Success

The cloud migration process cannot end once the actual migration is complete. The entire process can be considered successful only if and when legacy systems have been decommissioned and all services and applications on the new cloud setup are tested. It is essential, therefore, to include a robust testing schedule in your strategy.

Keep Track of Updates

To make your cloud future-proof, it is vital that you stay on top of updates. Cloud providers continuously introduce new features, and your organization should keep up to date with new features and upgrade them to their systems. Include an update cycle in your cloud migration strategy to guarantee your organization reaps maximum benefits from the cloud. Once data has been migrated to the cloud, it is crucial to ensure it is optimized, secured, and easily retrievable. You should also keep an eye for real-time changes to essential infrastructures and predict workload connections.

Assess the Security of Data

Apart from keeping track of updates and real-time monitoring, it is also important to assess the security of the data. This guarantees that your new cloud environments meet the demands of existing regulatory compliance laws such as GDPR and HIPAA.

Migrate to Cloud with the Help of Centerpoint IT

The cloud environment is moving at a dizzying pace, and changes are constant. The entire process may seem an insurmountable undertaking, given the complexities involved. You need to partner with a knowledgeable MSP to guide your entire move to the cloud and ensure your organization reaps maximum benefits from your investment. Centerpoint IT provides cloud solutions that can help you simplify the migration process. We have top-notch tools that can help you move your assets easily, quickly, and securely. Our experts also provide top-notch solutions and support to help you automate, sync, and secure data while transitioning to the cloud. Connect with Centerpoint IT today to start a conversation on migrating IT assets to the cloud.

Thanks to our colleagues at Velocity IT for their support and help with this content.