Many organizations struggle with their efforts to move their key applications to the public cloud. Thankfully for them, they never gave up and persisted. They learned from their mistakes and improved their results before making subsequent attempts.
To have a successful enterprise cloud transformation of your mission-critical applications to the cloud, you need to avoid repeating the mistakes of others. This post will guide you with a checklist that will help you identify the key areas of your organization that you need to address to make the most of migrating your applications to the cloud successfully.
1. Determine Migration-Architect
Before you start your cloud migration, you must establish the role of the migration architect. This individual is responsible for planning and implementing the necessary changes to the environment to make the migration successful. They should also be able to identify the necessary changes and develop strategies to make the migration successful and mistake-free.
2. Choose Cloud Integration Level
You can either choose a deep or shallow cloud integration level when it comes to moving an application from a traditional data center to the cloud. A shallow cloud integration model is commonly referred to as lift-and-shift. This type of migration involves moving an on-premises application to the public cloud. It doesn’t make any changes to the servers that you’re currently using in the cloud. Any changes that are made to the application will automatically get it running in the new environment. Lift-and-shift is also referred to as cloud-as-is because the application is moved to the cloud intact.
Deep cloud integration is typically performed when you modify an existing application to take advantage of the various features of the public cloud. This type of migration might involve using Amazon Web Services’ serverless computing capabilities or implementing a data store that’s specifically designed for the cloud.
3. Choose Multi-Cloud or Single Cloud
Before you start the cloud migration, you should decide which type of environment you want to run your application in. For instance, you can choose a single cloud provider to ensure that the application runs smoothly in a single environment.
Getting the most out of your cloud provider is relatively simple if you have a small development team and a set of cloud APIs. With just one set of APIs, your team can easily take advantage of all the features of the cloud provider.
One of the biggest disadvantages of this approach is that it can require a lot of effort to move your applications to a different provider. This method could also prevent you from negotiating important terms with the cloud provider. Having a single cloud provider can affect your ability to negotiate the terms of your contract.
4. Establish Cloud KPIs
A good way to measure the performance of your applications and services is by creating Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These are tools that you can use to gather information about how your applications are performing. Although you may already have these, they should still be the right ones for the cloud.
An important factor that you should consider when assessing the performance of your applications is the status of your in-progress migration. Having a well-defined cloud migration KPI can help you identify potential issues and improve the efficiency of your operations.
5. Determine Performance Baselines
A baseline is a process that involves measuring the current performance of your service or application before the migration is complete. It can help you determine if the improvements that you’re expecting from the new environment are acceptable. You can also refer to these baselines as a reference point for any issues that you might encounter during the migration.
Before you start the cloud migration, you must decide which KPI you’ll measure. You should determine how long you’ll need to collect data to reach the baseline. For instance, if you want to measure the performance of your applications in just a day, you should choose a short baseline period. On the other hand, if you want to measure the performance of your services over a month, you should choose a longer period.
Final Thoughts
Although the checklist covers most of the essential steps that you should take when it comes to moving to the cloud, there are still other factors that you should consider. One of these is ensuring that your environment is secure. With the help of resources and tools from the major cloud providers, you can easily build and maintain a secure system.
