Cloud migration is a digital transformation initiative where an organization reconfigures its IT resources to rely on cloud resources for some form of data migration to relocate company data and applications to a cloud service provider’s platform.
An enterprise operating its private network infrastructure may choose to migrate its operations to the cloud and reduce its infrastructure costs and management. They would identify a suitable cloud service provider and migrate their applications and data to the CSPs infrastructure, but not necessarily as a complete migration. Compliance requirements may demand some special cloud configurations, and enterprises can choose a hybrid cloud configuration, thereby securely sharing their private cloud with a public cloud provider in partial data migration to the CSP, all while maintaining sensitive data on-premises.
Later, successful enterprises may outstrip their current cloud service provider’s capabilities and must look for alternatives. Equally so, diversifying over several different CSPs to ensure redundancy may prompt a search for partner alternatives and the enterprise may simply manage multiple CSP relationships in their pursuit of better service uptime and quality. In each case, data must be transferred.
Though there is a high level of standardization with most leading cloud platforms, migrating applications and data still requires a sophisticated level of integration between CSPs for a successful and seamless migration.
Cloud providers also act as a capacity option for enterprise systems. In peak times, when workloads can inundate an enterprise system, local systems can take advantage of the cloud’s flexible capabilities by invoking cloud bursting, where network traffic is routed to cloud resources, virtually on standby, to help carry extra server load.
For enterprises, there are many compelling technical benefits and business reasons to adopt cloud services. Top of the list is risk mitigation and reduced total cost of ownership. By migrating capacity to the cloud, IT departments are choosing to offload the burden of managing and maintaining on-premise infrastructure used to support services, and instead, reclaim valuable time to focus on core capabilities. Likewise, when service level agreements are agreed to between partner CSPs, then enterprises can rely on a set quality level and capacity for a fixed cost, effectively reducing a portion of in-house IT operations to a single line item.
Among those overarching benefits, the following are significant cloud benefits:
Even with leading cloud provider migration tools, planning must precede every cloud migration. Without adequate forethought, IT teams can be hampered by several common cloud migration challenges.
The cloud migration process is highly dependent on the source IT setup and the cloud migration circumstances. While leading cloud service providers do provide tools that help streamline the process to migrate to other popular cloud providers, data stored in legacy or proprietary formats may require custom preparation for migration. There is, however, a general cloud migration process that can guide IT teams in mapping their specific journey.
The movement of any significant portion of IT resources to the cloud or amongst cloud providers is a cloud migration.
Cloud migration service providers assist companies with migrations, specifically those with large volumes and various types of files. These cloud migration services provide expertise in preparing and implementing cloud migration plans for companies with limited experience. For large companies, the task may simply be too unwieldy and complex to rely on in-house departments alone. These services can then step in and help organizations move business data and applications securely from private infrastructure to cloud environments.
Cloud-native capabilities are in many ways better than legacy capabilities. The ease of flexibility and scaling is usually top of mind when considering storing data in the cloud. But migrating legacy applications to the cloud may prove more challenging if cloud providers cannot support an environment for those applications. When addressing the lack of appropriate hosting environments for their business applications, organizations need to consider the necessity for these applications, if they’re vital but incompatible, companies have several strategies to follow to try and remedy the issue:
Cloud migration services are good for easily overcoming the data migration learning curve. However, there are cloud migrations tools if IT teams find themselves in a situation where they plan on migrating without third-party support. Assessment tools help teams evaluate current IT infrastructure in preparation for cloud migration, and cloud migration software assists in relocating files.
Cloud Migration Assessment Tools — Migrations are complex processes where assessment tools can help evaluate the viability of such a move. Assessment tools analyze company IT resources and infrastructure to produce readiness reports highlighting cost benefits, risk assessments, and security before migrating to the cloud. For enterprises, sophisticated analytics and visualizations can help in determining areas of less or more readiness.
Cloud Migration Software — After completing a cloud migration feasibility and readiness plan, companies can use cloud migration software to backup, encrypt, and document the company’s data ready for migration. Many leading cloud providers have cloud migration software packages that integrate with their entire cloud suite making it exceptionally convenient to migrate volumes of calendars, contacts, data, documents, and email to a cloud provider. Without these tools, significant time would be spent conducting a cloud migration.
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