Why use a cloud migration strategy?
A well-designed cloud migration strategy is necessary for businesses seeking to take advantage of the scalability, cost efficiency, and security of the cloud. By understanding the different migration types, and carefully implementing a strategic approach suited to their unique requirements and goals, organizations can reduce the likelihood of issues, and successfully transition to the cloud.
Common Cloud Migration Challenges
Cloud migration challenges can threaten the success of the project:
- Downtime or Disruption: Migrating applications and data from on-premises environments to the cloud can result in temporary downtime, impacting business operations and user experience. Unforseen or mishandled problems experienced during the migration may result in service disruption.
- Data Loss Potential: Inadequate data management practices during a migration can lead to data loss, corruption, and incompatibilities or inconsistencies between environments.
- Unforseen Performance Issues: The selection of an inappropriate data center region can result in higher latency, while inefficient architectural decisions can result in sub-optimal application performance.
- Misconfigurations: In addition to potential performance impacts, misconfiguration of cloud infrastructure can introduce vulnerabilities leading to unauthorized access, data breaches, or other security incidents.
Underestimated Resource Utilization: Cloud resource needs require careful consideration to stay within the project budget. Inaccurate forecasting or selection of inappropriate pricing models can result in inadequate resources for the workload, or overprovisioning of resources that results in unnecessary costs.
Types of Cloud Migration
This section covers the four primary types of cloud migration strategies, and the advantages and disadvantages of each type.
Rehost
Rehosting, also called lift-and-shift, minimizes the changes necessary for application code or infrastructure. An example of this is moving on-premises virtual machines (VMs) to cloud-based VM instances. A typical use-case is legacy applications with limited resource requirements. Rehosting is typically fast, demands fewer code changes, and reduces downtime potential. This makes it a good option for organizations on a tight deadline.
Refactor
Refactoring is a process whereby architectural changes are made to remediate problems, enhance features or offer new capabilities. In a cloud migration, the application may be modified to take advantage of cloud-native capabilities or best practices. For example, monolithic applications can be refactored to decouple subsystems into microservices, improving scalability, performance, and maintainability. While refactoring often offers tangible benefits, it is not always feasible or cost-effective.
Replatform
In a re-platform migration, components of an application are upgraded to leverage cloud capabilities, but it does not drastically affect the architecture. For instance, an organization may gradually migrate an application to a cloud-based database while retaining the majority of its existing backend and frontend code. This approach allows for quick wins, such as access to new features or improved performance, without significant changes to code or schema.
Replace
In this type of migration, part or all of an existing application or service is rebuilt into a cloud-native solution. Depending on the extent of changes required, replacement may result in a hybridized on-premises/cloud system or an entirely new cloud application. A complete replacement is a reasonable option when the existing systems are severely outdated or when new functionality is needed, but circumstances make refactoring an undesirable alternative. However, the replacement strategy may not be practical due to the effort involved.
Understanding these migration types informs the creation of a safe and secure cloud migration strategy.
Developing a Cloud Migration Strategy
#1. Define Business Objectives
The first and most important step is to clearly outline the reasons driving cloud migration. Understanding the motivations and desired outcomes can help leadership and stakeholders to align on goals. Objectives may include cost savings, agility or scalability, access to new features or services, or improved business continuity.
#2. Assess the Environment
Gather essential information about the present IT environment. This should include all relevant applications, their components, and purposes. Determine how applications and systems interact, share data, or rely on services in common (e.g., databases, message queues). Assess resource usage, high availability requirements, peak and off-peak workload patterns, performance, and disaster recovery requirements.
#3. Choose Target Cloud Provider(s)
One or more cloud providers will align best with the organization’s needs and goals. Evaluate their pricing structures, infrastructure features and services, compliance and security measures, datacenter locations, and partner technology ecosystem.
#4. Plan the Migration Approach
For all relevant applications, determine the most appropriate migration type based on its characteristics, business objectives, and technical constraints. The most common migration types are Rehost, Refactor, Replatform, or Replace. (Refer to the previous section for more details.)
#5. Create a Proof-of-Concept (PoC)
Validate the migration approach and assumptions by performing a PoC with a small workload representative of the existing environment. Define key performance indicators (KPIs) such as application response time, resource utilization, or cost savings to measure success.
#6. Develop a Detailed Migration Plan
Based on the data gathered from the previous steps, create a full migration plan. A detailed plan outlines milestones or a phased approach, defining a clear sequence in which the application components and dependencies are moved. It should also include the migration teams involved, any automation tools needed, risk management, and a testing strategy for successful migration verification.
#7. Execute the Migration
Execute the migration plan while closely monitoring progress. Keep communication lines open to ensure stakeholders are aware of the project’s status and available to mitigate any issues that arise. Gather data about application performance and utilization for the final step. Consider creating a migration support desk to ensure efficient issue mitigation and cross-team communication during the cloud migration process.
#8. Review and Optimize
Once the migration is complete, evaluate the successes and any failures against the original plan, business objectives, and KPIs. Analyze data gathered during the migration to identify opportunities for optimization in terms of cost, performance, or functionality.
These steps comprise a migration plan that supports the organization’s long-term goals.
Benefits of Cloud Migration
Cloud migrations can offer a number of benefits which drive business growth and competitiveness:
- Cost Savings: Hosting services in the cloud substantially reduces costs associated with hardware maintenance, updates, and related tasks. This frees up staff and resources to focus on other business objectives. Because cloud providers share resources among multiple customers, they can achieve significant cost efficiencies and pass these savings on with lower pricing.
- Improved Scalability: IT teams can quickly spin up or scale down environments as needed, and cloud services are capable of automatically adjusting resources in response to fluctuating workloads.
- Microservices and Virtualization: Virtualization of cloud infrastructure through technologies like containers also simplifies management, lowering operational cost and complexity. The adoption of a microservices architecture further enhances agility and maintainability.
- Advanced Capabilities: Cutting-edge cloud services such as machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and big data analytics give customers an advantage over traditional hosting options. These services make the deployment of advanced functionality easier and faster, enriching product innovation.
- Better Business Continuity: Cloud providers offer built-in high availability (HA) features, replication, and load balancing. When paired with geographically distributed data centers with automated failover features, migrating to the cloud can help minimize interruptions to service delivery.
- Enhanced Security and Compliance: CSPs invest heavily in security infrastructure, compliance certifications, and the technical expertise required to maintain, update, and patch their services. These factors reduce the likelihood of vulnerabilities exposed within cloud platforms. Customers of CSPs are responsible for securing attached networks, and data or applications running in the cloud.
Cloud Migration Security with Check Point CloudGuard
Check Point CloudGuard is an AI-powered cloud security platform designed to protect organizations from known and unknown threats, minimizing the probability of a data breach. CloudGuard reduces the risk of cloud migrations by preventing malware infections, zero day exploits, and cyber attacks before they cause damage.
Sign up for a free demo of CloudGuard to learn how your organization can safeguard its critical cloud applications against the internet’s most severe dangers.
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