Since the 2000’s when the basic idea of cloud migration services came to speed, it never witnessed a lookback. Instead, we got some additions to the plate every single year. The cloud migration market is currently valued at $181.29 billion and is expected to register a CAGR of 28.24% during the forecast period to become $628.83 billion by the next five years.
Though not every business caters to a similar migration strategy of transferring every bit and piece of the data and architecture to the cloud in one go. The strategy largely depends on the business and technical requirements. Now, when we talk about On-premises to cloud migration, it basically signifies the movement of data, applications etc. hosted on your in-house data center to be deployed in the cloud environment.
Let’s apprehend the attributes of migrating from On-premises to cloud.
On-premises to Cloud Migration
As the name suggests, on-premises to cloud is the large-scale cloud migration of data and applications from an in-house data center to cloud. Here the cloud environment can be leveraged as an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) or platform-as-a-service (PaaS). While planning to utilize cloud services such as AWS migration services, you must have a well-thought through idea on adopting the right type of cloud environment. One of the below options could be your choice:
- Public Cloud
- Private Cloud
- Hybrid Cloud
- Multi-Cloud
The 7 Cloud Migration Strategies
Cloud migration is not limited to the popular method of lift and shift, it can be altered according to your migration strategy. Considering the distinctive requisites such as the data quantity, complexity, budget etc. you can choose the approach which stays parallel to your business goals. Here are the seven types of cloud migration approaches used to strategize cloud migration.
- Retire
Mostly used when businesses are planning to decommission or archive their application from the servers within the application stack. There is probably no constructive business value in moving the app to the cloud but certain factors including hosting cost and security risks can encourage you to migrate the application.
Who is it best-suited for? A business which no longer requires their application and is willing to make a shut down but needs to retain the app on the cloud considering multiple factors such as regular maintenance cost and security risks involved.
- Retain
This strategy revolves around keeping the applications in the source environment intact or have future plans to migrate the app. This migration is mostly opted if you’re willing to retain applications in order to remain in compliance with data residency, or future plans to migrate to software as a service (SaaS) as soon as the vendor makes it available in the near future.
Who is it best-suited for? A business who needs to postpone their cloud migration until the next technical refresh, as you’ve invested a handsome amount in upgrading the current application infrastructure, but do have future plans to migrate.
- Rehosting
Popularly known as “Lift and Shift” or “Forklift Migration”, consider rehosting to be the most adopted and simplest genre of on-premises to cloud migration. And why do we say that? Because every fragment of data, applications, and the entire workload can be moved from the in-house data center to the cloud environment without any alterations or updates. It can be a seamless process but, as the application isn’t modified to be cloud-native, you might stay ‘locked’ with rapidly outdated features or technology.
Who is it best-suited for? For businesses just kicking off cloud migration for the first time, or that may be relatively new to the cloud with low-impact on-premises workload, this might be their approach of choice.
- Relocate
Through making use of the relocate strategy you can transfer a huge number of servers including one or more applications in one fell swoop from an on-premises setting to a cloud environment. Relocate is also beneficial for moving instances or objects to another virtual private cloud (VPC), AWS region, or an AWS account as well. The major advantage of using this strategy is that the business does not require you to purchase a new hardware, rewrite applications or even make changes in the current operating system, even at the time of large-scale cloud migration, the app will continue to serve users and diminishes any possible downtime.
Who is it best-suited for? A business which is willing to migrate their applications super quick, reducing the downtime and need to stay on a budget as well.
- Repurchasing
Also known as “drop and shop”, this strategy enables you to replace your application with an entirely different version or product. Here the newly adopted application will be equipped with more business value, basically reducing the costs associated with maintenance, infrastructure, and vendor licensing.
Who is it best-suited for? This approach fits best for enterprises who are currently operating legacy applications or might have their apps compromised, where discarding seems the only option. It allows the migration of data from on-premises applications and moving the same to cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications curated by third parties.
- Replatform
Mostly known as “lift”, “tinker”, and lift and reshape, replatforming is used to move apps to cloud while incorporating some optimization in order to operate the app more efficiently.
Who is it best-suited for? A business looking to save some time and reduce the overall cost by moving the entire data/application to a serverless service in the cloud.
- Refactoring
Also known as “Re-Architect”, this approach can be considered when a business needs to take complete advantage of cloud-native features through migrating their application to the cloud. The basic goal behind the shift is improving agility, performance and scalability.
Who is it best-suited for? If you have plans to move all or most of your applications and workloads off-premises, refactoring could be the right choice! Why? Because following the application migration, the apps are redesigned from the core while leveraging the latest cloud technology and features. This can be an excellent ‘work-now-get-rewarded-later’ strategy for your business!
Why Migrate?
It might be a business’s personal preference, but cloud migration definitely carries some significant perks.
- Reach & Accessibility
We’re already aware that the cloud can be excellent in terms of accessibility, especially when a business is multi-region or spread across distant geographies. Migrating workloads to a public cloud can be a wise and streamlined decision when you have resources around the globe and need access to critical applications and real-time company data. - Ease & Scalability
Here we can quickly compare an on-premises infrastructure where if it’s required to scale anytime, a business would have a long list of requisites to cater for such as software licenses, physical servers, storage network equipment and so on. Parallelly, if we talk about scalability on cloud, it’s much easier or just a matter of a few clicks as it can be auto scaled or trimmed/ scaled down depending on the requirements. - Cost Efficient
A huge chunk of business capital is put aside for ongoing maintenance and regular upgrades for on-premises technology. However, this is where the most cost savings can be made shifting to the cloud. The cloud service provider (CSP) is now responsible for taking care of maintenance and upgrades, saving heaps on the IT operations expenses. Also scaling up and down is manageable effectively on cloud in comparison to on-premises. Ultimately, you only pay for the services being used since resources are automatically scaled on demand. - Security and Compliance
Trusted cloud service providers capable of large-scale cloud migration, such as AWS, Azure, or Google etc., provide efficient and impactful cloud-native security features which allow you to adhere to compliance requirements in terms of data workloads. Migrating your data, apps, and architecture to the cloud can be a plus in maintaining the security and compliance which in turn are evidently essential for your business.
Final Thoughts
Large-scale migration on-premises data to the cloud can seem daunting and risky at the same time, but having the right partner can surely make the journey smooth enough. Looking at the above-mentioned considerations, it seems clear that cloud migration is a great choice and can be immensely useful in handling security, scalability, accessibility and much more.
