For this transition to occur smoothly and efficiently, careful planning is essential, considering various aspects such as the choice of suitable cloud providers, the variety of native services available and factors such as latency, security, costs and other relevant elements.
How to plan a successful migration?
Define the objectives of the migration
Clearly establish the objectives of the migration, including the expected benefits in the short, medium and long term. Consider both the impact on the business and on the operation of the workloads. Some objectives may be cost reduction, greater scalability or access to cloud-native technologies.
Map the workloads
Carry out a complete survey of the systems in your current environment and organise the migration sequence according to the characteristics and needs of each one. It is essential to have architecture diagrams and a detailed inventory of the environments.
Estimate the costs of migration and operation in the cloud
Before starting the migration, it is important to identify all the costs associated with the process, including expenses for changes and upgrades to the application architecture and the recurring costs of operating cloud services. To estimate these costs, it is recommended to use the pricing calculators provided by cloud providers.
Choose the migration approach
Use the ‘5Rs’ model to guide your service migration strategies, such as Refactor, Rehost, Replatform, Retain and Retire.
Build a landing zone
Design and implement a standard and secure environment that serves as a basis for deploying workloads, applications, data and services in the cloud. This will ensure that your cloud resources are created in an organised manner and with a solid foundation.
Ensure adequate access to the cloud
Guarantee appropriate permissions following the principle of least privilege and facilitate the transition of users to the new environment.
Ensure the security of the environment
Implement measures such as data encryption, robust authentication, access control, firewalls and monitoring tools. Make sure you comply with the specific regulations of the country and sector in which your business operates to avoid sanctions or legal problems.
Perform migration tests
Before the final migration, validate the application and infrastructure layers through tests to identify necessary adjustments.
Establish a communication plan
Communicate clearly about the stages, deadlines and expectations with everyone involved, including internal teams, end users, business areas and partners. Transparent communication is essential to reduce uncertainties and ensure confidence in the migration process.
Monitor performance
Use monitoring tools (cloud native or third-party) to track performance and identify potential issues in migrated workloads.
Ensure data and service integrity
Validate that migrated data and services have been transferred without loss or corruption.
Have a rollback plan
Even if all the preparation and mapping of the migration process is carried out, unexpected problems can arise. Therefore, it is essential to prepare a rollback strategy for all phases of the migration and for all workloads involved in case of unforeseen events.
Deactivate on-premises resources
As resources are migrated to the cloud, deactivate on-premises resources to avoid unnecessary costs of maintaining both environments.
Invest in training
Migrating your services to the cloud may require new skills and knowledge from your technology teams, so it is important to offer training, workshops and certifications so that technical teams are prepared for the challenges of the new infrastructure.
