As an SME, church or charity, you might be wondering about cloud migration. It’s the next logical step to help reduce costs and increase efficiency. But what’s involved? What do you have to do? And what order do you have to do it in?
In this blog post, we’ll explain the steps you need to take to start (and finish) migrating your organisation’s systems to the cloud. Let’s get started.
Framework for cloud migration
ICT has two well-known frameworks for creating and managing new systems. These are known as PBR and DevOps.
In a ‘Plan, Build, Run’ (PBR) framework, the process is split into three stages or departments.
Meanwhile, DevOps merges the team that develops the system with the team that manages the system such that the developers are responsible for managing the system they develop. Thus, they are less likely to develop something that cannot be supported as they’re the ones responsible for providing the support.
In general, most projects follow a PBR format. It’s a simple, easy-to-manage project process where everyone has clearly-defined roles. Nowadays, we tend to implement aspects of DevOps too. Done right, you end up with the clear-cut structure of PBR and the flexibility of DevOps.
However, cloud migrations tend to approach the overall task to “migrate N applications from on premise to cloud” in a PBR manner, using PRINCE2 style project management. But, the approach to the discovery elements and migration elements tends to utilise DevOps techniques for example by viewing groups of applications targeted for migration as ‘sprints’, and individual applications where the code is ‘owned’ by the organisation may be moved be pointing the development pipeline at a cloud destination.
Each organisation creates its own method. What works well for you probably won’t work for someone else. When planning a strategy, the following (and much more) needs to be considered:
- What are the primary objectives of moving to cloud – to reduce cost? To exit a DC? To improve service quality?
- What applications are in scope of the migration?
- What are acceptable target architectures – IaaS, PaaS and SaaS?
- How are you going to connect to the cloud environment during migration and after migration?
- What budget is available to support the migration? What must the solution cost once migrated?
Let’s look at the three phases.
Step 1: Plan
Before getting started with cloud migration, you need a solid strategy. It’s good to sit down and think through the most critical aspects of your existing system. At this stage, it’s essential to understand what’s motivating the move to cloud, as this will affect what the success criteria are and allow you to plan to succeed.
You’ll also need to identify what doesn’t work well, what needs improving, and how easy/difficult stakeholders find it to use.
Keep several objectives in mind during the ‘Plan’ phase. These include:
- Ensure the new cloud-based system is user-centric (easy to use)
- Focus on streamlining efficiency
- Plan to use contractors and staff with the necessary expertise
- Budget
The ‘Plan’ phase simply involves compiling and analysing data. Consider setting up focus groups and getting usage data from your ICT department. Chat with the finance team and ask all staff for general feedback.
Compiling this, you’ll end up with a comprehensive plan for proceeding.
Step 2: Build
Now that your well-designed strategy is in place, it’s time to start building the new programme.
As part of cloud migration, this may involve starting with your pre-existing system. Some prefer to start from scratch.
Most organisations start by ‘discovering’ what servers, storage, and applications they are currently running and then identifying how each application could move to the cloud at a high level, either by ‘lift and shift’, rebuild in the cloud as IaaS, migrate to PaaS, migrate to SaaS, or kill.
Replacing with a wholly new system is generally not something that organisations will initially do as it is hard. Typical migrations move to the cloud as IaaS, because this is easy. Over time, they will then migrate from IaaS in cloud to other modes of delivery. Again, it’s whatever works best for your business and its needs.
Your existing ICT service usually needs to keep running throughout this period. Continue with your processes as usual, including data back-ups and security maintenance.
In the ‘Build’ phase, ICT developers will create cloud-based programs that suit you. When it comes to these, the sky’s the limit. Low-code is currently all the rage – it’s a way to get most of the benefits at a fraction of the cost. Overseen by an ICT specialist for any more technical requirements, this is often the most cost-effective method. However, low-code requires two things:
- A low-code ‘centre of excellence’ within your organisation that owns and defines the guard rails for the use of low-code
- Citizen developers with in the broader organisation to make use of low-code
Consequently, only a subset of the total application portfolio in an organisation would be suitable for replacement with low code.
‘Build’ also usually involves beta testing and improvements based on reports and analytics.
Step 3: Run
In the ‘Run’ phase, you’ll launch your system. By this point, cloud migration is complete – but it’s only the start of your journey.
Before the application launches fully, it’s best to get end-user training in place. The quicker your staff or customers learn to use the new system, the better.
You’ll need ongoing maintenance for the system. Ever-developing security threats mean you’ll need to update things on a regular basis. In fact, Cyber Essentials gives a deadline of two weeks for any ‘high risk’ or ‘critical’ patches. Whenever bugs or glitches develop in the system (as they inevitably will), you’ll need dedicated staff or consultants to help.
Although it might all sound like a lot, you should find that a well-executed cloud migration means lower costs and increased efficiency.
Who can help me migrate to the cloud?
AMDH Services Ltd is a certified Microsoft Partner, also specialising in Azure and AWS. As qualified and experienced ICT consultants, we’ll get to know your organisation. What makes you tick? And what do you need from a cloud migration?
If you’re struggling to grasp the processes involved with cloud migration, why not get in touch with us? Our services cover everything from start to finish, including:
- Strategy
- Cost modelling
- Designing
- Security
- Infrastructure
Please use the form at the bottom of the page if you’d like to contact us regarding cloud migration. Or maybe you aren’t sure if your SME, church or charity needs a new digital system? If so, we’d still love it if you got in touch. We’ll give you free, obligation-free advice for your business. We never try to persuade anyone to turn to cloud systems if we think they don’t need it.
We hope you found this overview helpful and look forward to learning about your organisation and how we can assist.
