Cloud Migration Process and Benefits of Cloud Migration

What is Cloud Migration?

Everyone should know what cloud migration is. Are you using Google Drive, Zoom, SharePoint, etc.? If yes, you are using the cloud. Cloud migration is the process of moving your digital assets, applications, databases, and other IT resources into a cloud computing environment. It allows you to manage your infrastructure remotely without any security risks. Cloud environments are most popular because they’re scalable, reliable, and highly available. Of course, we should do proper analysis and planning for the migration process because it’s not so easy to achieve real-time performance. Migration to the cloud can be done in different ways, depending on your strategy or the size of the application.

• A common way to migrate is to use an application to move all of your data from the local data center to the public cloud.
• Moving your data and applications from one cloud platform to another is called “cloud-to-cloud migration.”
• Throwback cloud resources to your local data center is called reverse cloud migration.

Things to be considered before migration

Before moving forward with migration, ask yourself some questions.

• Do you want to move part of the application or the full application to the cloud?
• Try to catch the cost of the cloud, which is required for moving and working in the cloud.
• Differentiate the cost of your current system and the cloud’s cost after moving.
• How will you manage the infrastructure on the cloud platform?
• Do you have people with the skills to run and manage the cloud platform well?
• The cloud makes security better, but you still need to know how to keep your data safe.
• Make sure cloud costs will not cross out of budgets.
• Check for newer versions of services and update regularly.

Cloud Migration Process

There are some basic steps that need to be followed during cloud migration.

Select the cloud environment

• Choose a cloud environment that meets all of your needs and helps you save money and time based on what you need.
• The most popular environments are Google Cloud, AWS Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. They all offer private and public clouds, as well as the best security, scalability, cost estimation, and test and build processes.
• Study all features properly, and then decide which one is the best environment for your application.

Consider your use cases and set your goal.

• Monitoring performance, timeliness, and billing should be the basic aims.
• Sometimes the cost will be high at the initial level, but if you think about the long term, it might be cheap. So plan your goal by considering short-term and long-term productivity.
• Employee awareness is also a core factor that you should consider.

Move your existing data to the cloud and make sure it’s always up-to-date.

• Move your existing data to the cloud and make sure it’s always up-to-date.
• There are multiple options for moving data to the cloud, such as moving data to a private network or moving data to a public network.
• You can transfer data online or offline. You can select any way based on the type and amount of your data and application.

Once you move everything to the cloud, it’s just the beginning of your journey.

• You should be aware of the security strategy and try to give “least privilege” access. Update your system regularly and check inbound requests to your resources.
• You should also consider whether you will receive a return on your migration investment.

One of our clients had a marketplace solution for Amazon vendors. Here vendors can manage products for sale, and the marketplace provides basic reports that are insufficient for vendor decision-making. Due to these basic reports, the client was losing vendors and wants to develop a solution that can assist vendors in decision-making and inventory management. After reviewing the details, we suggested developing an application with a private data center and later moving the full infrastructure to the AWS cloud to achieve more flexibility and scalability and lower the cost. In this Data Analytics Solution, we’ve used some serverless infrastructure in AWS like S3, DynamoDB, Lambda, Farget (ECS), and Athena, which helps in automation and generating dynamic reports.

Benefits of Cloud Migration

Security

• After moving to the cloud, security is the main concern for your application, and the cloud is the right place for you.
• Most of the cloud environment follows “shared responsibility,” which means the cloud also offers better security. They provide security analytics, periodic updates, daily logs, etc.
• They also take care of your system and stop unwanted requests from outside. They ensure automatic security-related updates are applied to the system to keep it vulnerable to known security threats.
• AWS facilities many compliance certifications, like ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, AICPA/SOC, and HIPAA. It will keep your data secure.

Scalability

• The cloud provides the best ability to scale up and down resources based on your requirements.
• Suppose you want your system to be highly scalable on certain days, but on other days, traffic is very low. In the cloud, you can easily scale up the system on certain days and scale it down on others.
• There is no need to do it manually; you can set up your infrastructure, and then the cloud will do it automatically. So it will save you money indirectly.
• Of course, your application can grow without affecting its performance or user experience.

Cost

• It will improve your process as well as reduce cost because, on the cloud, you only pay when you use resources.
• It will store important data for a long time, so there is no need to build any other costly data centers.
• As per the survey, 40% to 50% of companies move their infrastructure to the cloud to cut down on costs. It gives you the best configuration, better security, and enough hardware to run your application.
• Lots of people are moving to the cloud; this does not mean they want to decrease costs, but they will get good flexibility.
• Public cloud hosts like AWS, Google, Microsoft, etc. are able to reduce your maintenance, power, and staffing costs compared to other private data centers.

Integration

• As per the survey of IT companies, the cloud improves the efficiency and productivity of your application.
• Any system will increase the load and decrease efficiency over time, so we have to perform optimization periodically. Otherwise, it will be expensive, and you will have to do tasks that take a long time and have to be done over and over again.
• After moving the cloud, the cloud will upgrade its infrastructure whenever required. So it will save cost, time, and resources.
• Your application is regularly improved, updated, and expanded based on business logic. That means your business can increase productivity by optimizing resources to scale up or down as per demand and using resources as you need.
• Simply put, we will concentrate solely on expanding our business.

Access

• After the migration, members of the organization can access data from anywhere in the world. So it will give you opportunities to grow your business worldwide.
• Many cloud servers notify you when your app has potential issues.
• With the help of backup and logging services, you can trace any issues from anywhere and restore an old backup to make your app fully workable.
• With the help of logs, you can get some critical information that will help you find issues in the first place.
• In the cloud, you can restrict access for anyone or any team. You can define access and roles for your teams and team members as per your business infrastructure.

A successful Cloud Migration cuts costs, increases scalability, and decreases the chance of a cyber attack that might disrupt your business. Consider a Cloud Migration if your firm requires enhanced security, optimal scalability, decreased expenses, smarter integrations, and more access to mission-critical functions. Our team of world-class engineers with experience in AWS, Microsoft Azure, and other Enterprise security environments executes each Cloud Migration project. Appsvolt will collaborate with your team at every step of the process to achieve a seamless and effective transfer. For every project we do, we strive to establish long-lasting partnerships. To get a free Cloud Migration assessment and estimate, contact us.