Explore the challenges, best practices, and key considerations for successful cloud adoption. From assessing readiness to planning the transition, ensuring security and compliance, and optimizing costs and performance, discover how to transition from on-premises to the cloud, the right way.
Cloud computing enables businesses to access pre-built infrastructure, platforms, and software without having to purchase and build the assets themselves. This revolutionary new approach to leveraging technology has many benefits. We spoke with TechQuarters, a managed service provider that has been helping clients leverage the cloud for over a decade. The managed IT support London businesses receive from companies like TechQuarters has become increasingly interlinked with the cloud. As more and more businesses look to shift away from on-premises deployments, and towards flexible, scalable cloud environments, it is important for companies to understand the steps and challenges they can expect.
We asked TechQuarters about the process of migrating to the cloud – read on to learn about the different aspects of migration strategies.
Cloud Adoption Readiness
Many businesses opt to work with an IT service provider (like TechQuarters) when migrating to the cloud. One of the first steps is for companies to assess their readiness for cloud adoption. This encompasses various actions, such as:
- Evaluate existing infrastructure, platforms and applications – Migrating to the cloud often involves overhauling one’s entire IT stack; though businesses may be able to translate much of their existing infrastructure to the cloud via virtualisation.
- Goals and objectives for cloud adoption – Another important step for planning a cloud migration is to define one’s goals and objectives. A business may be aiming to simplify their IT infrastructure and management, drive innovation, or make it easier to support remote and hybrid models of working.
Choosing Your Cloud Strategy
The next major step in planning a cloud migration is identifying what strategy works best for your organisation. Cloud migrations can be carried out in a number of ways – each varying in complexity and time frame. As a provider of managed IT services London companies have been adopting for over 10 years, TechQuarters have experienced every migration strategy possible – below is a breakdown of the most common approaches according to them:
- Lift & Shift – A Lift & Shift migration is when a company virtualises their existing on-premises IT infrastructure and moves it to an exact replica in the cloud. This is the least flexible and most resource-intensive approach.
- Refactoring – This is arguably the most complicated form of cloud migration. Refactoring involves re-architecting a business’ applications and workloads to fit a cloud environment. Though it is the most complicated approach, the long-term benefits include optimal cost-efficiency and scalability.
- Re-Platforming – This approach to migration is halfway between a Lift & Shift migration, and a total Refactoring migration. Re-platforming makes it possible for businesses to experiment with hybrid infrastructures, where some workloads are kept on-premises, while others are moved to the cloud.
Planning the Migration
Planning the actual execution of the migration requires a great deal of research and organisation. According to TechQuarters, the two most important things that a business needs for cloud migration are the following:
- Cloud Migration Team – Whether it is composed of in-house personnel, or outsourced to a provider like TechQuarters, a cloud migration team is absolutely essential. The migration team is responsible for the execution and management of the migration. Personnel within this team may include all or a combination of the following:
- Project Manager
- Cloud Architect
- CloudOps Manager & Engineers
- Governance and Security Manager
- DevOps Manager & Engineers
- Cloud Roadmap – The cloud roadmap is a custom strategy that is drawn up once an organisation has identified what its goals and objectives are for its cloud migration. As a managed IT support company that many businesses have worked with on cloud migrations, TechQuarters stressed the utmost importance of cloud roadmaps. The roadmap keeps the migration team, and the wider organisation, on track with milestones, and major deliverables.
