Many industries are exploring available options to migrate their applications to the cloud. The primary reason for the migration is the deployment speed, scalability, and a lower functional cost that cloud computing brings to the table. Additionally, it acts as a catalyst for enterprises finding ways to improve customer engagement, build new partnerships, and remain competitive, all of which are key to business transformation. Migration of applications is easier said than done. You need a strategy to assess workloads that gain the most from migration, the cost of migration, and application functionality, security, and privacy requirements. It is essential to establish whether the cloud environment provides comparable services to the traditional IT environment. Failing to correctly migrate applications to cloud computing can result in sluggish hosting services, higher costs, and potential loss of business. To assist you with the migration of applications to the cloud, we have prepared a guide that can act as a practical reference during migrating.
Migrating Applications to Public Cloud Services – Step by step guide
#1 Assess your Applications
Assessing your applications to establish the ones that are ready for cloud migration allows you to segregate them from the rest and even finalize supported models (public, private, or hybrid). Ideally, applications used only to manage activities and timelines, and running in different time zones, as opposed to IT infrastructure, or those that function occasionally while taking significant computing resources, are suitable for cloud migration. The readiness of the application spans through various considerations, including, application lifecycle and architecture, data and security, technology and integration, and business concerns.
#2 Build a Migration Strategy
Building an application migration strategy involves cost analysis, business impact, and service level assessment. Information describing the present state and validity of the need for cloud computing are prerequisites. You need to quantify the essential high-level value propositions for cloud computing such as cost savings, shifting of capital expenditures (CAPEX), operational expenses (OPEX), faster deployment speed, and elasticity, to name a few. You therefore, need to identify individual business problems that are addressable via cloud computing and prove their validity.
#3 Consider Technical Feasibility
Studying the technical feasibility of migration requires an assessment of skills, security, integration, scalability, availability, backup, monitoring, and management. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) are two potential service models that enterprises consider when migrating applications to cloud computing.
- PaaS Migration
PaaS services support applications running on more than one environment. They are therefore, suitable for application where business logic is executed as a set of components running on an application server in combination with a database containing application data and stored procedures. Your PaaS solution requires specific elements that are prerequisites to an operating system, application server, and database to ensure the user has minimal difficulty accessing application components and data.
- Iaas Migration
IaaS Migration calls for lower technicalities on the cloud service. You have to migrate the entire software load, including application and supporting codes, along with the underlying operating system. Package the entire application as a virtual machine image and copy it into the cloud service for execution. Make sure you are not migrating applications that require specialized device or hardware drivers to IaaS model. To ensure such applications perform desirable functionality on the cloud, test them on a trial VM environment before migrating.
#4 Adopting Flexible Integration Model
An application selected for migration to a cloud service may have integrations with several applications and systems; therefore, it is imperative for application owners to address these connections. These integrations are typically in the form of process integration, data integration, and presentation integration. They allow the application to perform end-to-end workflow, eliminating the limitations in business systems. Another form of integration that impacts the functionality of applications is when the migrated application requires regular monitoring and management by a predefined set of on-premises IT tools. Therefore, the challenge is to maintain the integration to ensure smooth functionality. You should be flexible, maintain the standards, and take future migration possibilities into considerations when planning your move.
Related Read – 4 Key Factors to Consider before Initiating Cloud Migration
#5 Managing the Migration
When you have the whole application migration defined on paper, your IT department needs to plan, execute, and manage the actual migration. Application migration, being a complicated and delicate project, requires formal project planning and skilled technicians at work. As with every project plan, you should track tasks performed, duration, resources used, and costs and risks involved. Migration involves deploying the cloud environment, installing and configuring the applications, strengthening the production environment, executing mock migration, and final installation to production cloud.
Hosting Your Applications on the Cloud
Better customer reach, business agility and flexibility, improved security, and responsiveness, whatever your objective for application migration to the cloud, you require assistance from an accredited cloud service provider. A team of technical experts can assess your business problems with an existing system and establish if cloud computing is the rightful alternative. i2K2 Networks Pvt. Ltd. is a trusted dedicated web hosting company that can assist you in your quest to migrate and host your applications to the cloud. To learn more about our cutting-edge enterprise solutions, you can give us a call at +91-120-466 3031, and our representatives will assist you with all your concerns.