Cloud migration strategy: Best practices + how to do it

While there was certainly value in having your own data center in the past, companies are now turning away from personal data centers. Even Netflix uses the cloud to offer its streaming services to users worldwide. 

The reason for this shift to the cloud? Costs. A 2023 Couchbase report reveals that 54 percent of IT decision-makers find the cloud essential for a balanced IT budget. 

Plus, there’s an overall drive for digital transformation as well. Businesses are looking forward to leveraging artificial intelligence, metaverse, and machine learning to disrupt their markets. This is primarily possible via the IT resources of cloud infrastructure. 

Data backs it up as well. For example, Gartner expects 75 percent of organizations to adopt a cloud-based digital transformation model by 2026. 

That said, the path of cloud adoption isn’t without challenges. Lifting and shifting your workloads from an on-premises solution to the cloud takes a fair bit of planning. Similarly, with the abundant cloud options, you have to find an optimal cloud configuration as well. 

In other words, you must have a cloud migration plan that accounts for all the cloud-related challenges before you make the switch. 

Read on to learn more about cloud migration, reasons to consider it, its challenges, and guidelines for developing a cloud migration strategy. 

• What is a cloud migration strategy?
• Reasons to consider cloud migration
• Challenges with cloud migration
• Developing a cloud migration strategy for your organization
• Cloud migration strategy: Best practices
• Final thoughts: Building a robust cloud migration strategy

A typical cloud migration strategy involves considering application requirements, IT spending, and compliance issues related to the cloud. 

That said, why should you consider migrating to the cloud? While IT costs are one of the primary drivers, there are other reasons to consider cloud migration. Let’s dive in to find out. 

Reasons to consider cloud migration

As organizations transition to a digital-first business model, they face a range of problems — from varying demand to high risk of malicious agents. That said, cloud infrastructure appears to be a leading solution for many of those problems.

Scalability

In an on-premises solution, you invest in an IT infrastructure considering either the peak load or the average usage throughout the year. But both options have their cons. If you go with peak, you have to deal with unused IT resources. And if you go with average, your system tends to fail during the demanding sessions. 

In contrast, cloud solutions offer instant scalability. So, you can scale up your IT resources within seconds to meet the peak demand without worrying about the capital investments associated with an on-premises solution. 

Cost savings

A cloud-based infrastructure saves your IT costs in multiple ways:

• Flexible pricing models: You can opt for pay-as-you-go or predictable subscription models to pay only for the IT resources you require. 
• No capital expense: Cloud lets you turn your capital costs into operating costs. Instead of incurring a high IT expense while building your on-premises solution, you pay a regular cloud fee to a third-party hosting provider to enjoy the flexibility of the cloud.
• Higher productivity: With the cloud provider handling the IT maintenance, your in-house developers can focus on high-priority tasks that help you improve your bottom line. 

Global coverage

Unless you have an unlimited IT budget, you can only operate a limited number of on-premises data centers. Labor costs, compliance issues, and infrastructure expenses make a multi-continent IT presence rather impractical. 

On the other hand, cloud hosting providers often have data centers in multiple locations to help you serve your customers wherever they are. So, your customers don’t have to deal with high latencies just because they’re far from you. Instead, you can connect to them with the cloud.

Business continuity

Even if you design an on-premises data center according to the peak demand, it doesn’t promise 100 percent uptime. IT equipment does and will fail, leaving you with an IT system that disconnects you from your customers. 

On the flip side, cloud providers typically have more than one data center spread across different geographical locations to avoid downtime. So, even if one of them fails, the other data centers can take over due to data redundancy in cloud infrastructure. 

With Liquid Web, you can enjoy near-100 percent uptime to keep your mission-critical applications online at all times due to its redundant infrastructure. 

Security

Unlike with an on-premises data center, you don’t need to hire specialized security professionals with the cloud. Cloud hosting providers already have robust security systems in place to protect your organizational data from malicious agents. 

If you’re looking to comply with data security standards, such as PCI-DSS or HIPAA, you can just opt for a compliant cloud solution instead of spending countless hours turning your on-premises data center compliant.

Consider Liquid Web if you’re looking for a hosting provider that complies with PCI-DSS. Liquid Web not only complies with PCI-DSS’s data center-specific regulations but also helps you with documentation to convey your compliance. 

Challenges with cloud migration

While adopting cloud technology means all the benefits mentioned above, there are a few migration challenges you might encounter.

Issues with integrations

While you can lift and shift your IT infrastructure from an on-premises data center to the cloud, moving a legacy system to the cloud might not always make sense cost-wise since it doesn’t leverage native cloud features. In particular, you might not be able to replicate the integrations and customizations of the legacy system in the cloud, making you rely on band-aid fixes that could cost extra. 

The solution in such cases is to tweak the IT applications to use cloud infrastructure and rely on native or third-party APIs. That said, it’s a hit-and-trial method. So, things can go wrong, increasing the duration and cost of the cloud migration project. 

Lack of cloud expertise

While the cloud lets you free up much of the workforce working on the on-premises data centers, it requires you to work with cloud practitioners who can manage your cloud-based infrastructure — but they’re few and far between. 

In fact, a 2023 SoftwareOne survey found that 95 percent of IT decision makers struggled with their organizational operations due to lack of cloud skills. 

The alternative is to train your existing IT workers to become proficient in cloud technology, but that will take some time, forcing you to bear with an unoptimized cloud setup.

Unexpected costs

According to Wanclouds, 67 percent of U.S. IT leaders experienced unexpected cloud bills, way higher than their estimates. So, it becomes a serious dilemma because the technology adopted to reduce IT costs isn’t working as desired. 

High cloud costs typically occur when employees misunderstand the pay-as-you-go model. For example, an employee might provision more resources than required for software testing or even forget to delete the container after use. 

While you can avoid unexpected cloud costs by training your employees, an alternative is to opt for predictable subscription models like what Liquid Web offers. Liquid Web’s VMware private cloud lets you get the benefits of the cloud without the associated cost challenges. 

Compliance issues

In public clouds, your applications share the IT infrastructure with many other organizations or tenants. While this helps with scalability and flexibility, it makes it difficult to comply with data security standards that prefer air gap — isolation of infrastructure from external connections. 

If you must comply with strict security standards, a private cloud offers a single-tenant, dedicated infrastructure for exclusive use. 

Unexpected technical challenges

Besides the above issues, a cloud migration can result in a range of technical issues, from data corruption to software incompatibilities. 

While there’s no way to see the future, you can avoid many such issues through rigorous testing, contingency plans, and robust support systems. 

In other words, you need a plan to ensure you get out of a cloud migration better than you entered it. Let’s see how to do exactly that. 

Developing a cloud migration strategy for your organization

While a cloud migration strategy involves tons of moving parts, here’s the typical flow of decisions to consider.

1. Identify business goals

The appropriate cloud environment for your organization depends on your goals. So, outline what you want to achieve from the cloud migration process. 

Typical business goals include:

• Reduction in IT infrastructure costs.
• Increased collaboration among developers.
• Instant scalability for meeting irregular audience demands. 

2. Assess your current IT infrastructure

Understand how your on-premises structure is designed. Document existing components — CPU, memory, storage, and network bandwidth — and identify performance bottlenecks or other issues to resolve. 

Besides that, see how the current infrastructure handles compliance-related activities. Note down the security policies you’re following. 

Finally, list all integration points with other systems, whether internal or external. In other words, consider all the dependencies of the current IT infrastructure and see how you can replicate it in the cloud. 

3. Analyze existing applications

Analyze existing applications to see if they’re compatible with cloud deployment or if they would require modernization.

There are five paths you can take with an application:

• Rehost: Also called lift and shift, rehosting means you host your existing application on the cloud while using the provider’s hardware as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). Rehosting requires little to no changes in the application. 
• Replatform: In re-platforming, you modify the application to use some of the cloud’s software, enabling it to run more natively in the cloud. Replatforming is considered a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) path. 
• Revise: If your existing application can use some upgrade, you can revise parts of it to make it more cloud-friendly by using microservices, restructuring code, or updating components.
• Rebuild: If you want to maximize the cloud benefits, you can refactor (or re-architect) the application by developing it from scratch via native cloud services. While rewriting offers the best performance, it means the highest upfront costs. 
• Replace: Compared to an on-premises solution, the cloud opens a world of integrations. So, if modifying an application seems costly, you can replace it with a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) app. Replacing is also called repurchasing. 

4. Determine optimal cloud resources

Cloud technology lets you design your IT infrastructure based on your regular demand instead of requiring you to cater to one-off workloads. 

So, besides assessing your on-premises infrastructure, note down how many cloud resources your applications use, and reach a final sum for provisioning a server. 

5. Choose the right cloud model

If you prioritize scalability, opt for a public cloud, where multiple organizations or tenants share the physical infrastructure and are separated by virtualization. Public clouds typically feature a global network of redundant data centers where your content is hosted. 

In contrast, if you must comply with data security standards or need to keep organizational data behind closed doors, opt for the physical isolation that the private cloud offers. 

And, if you have a need for both isolation and scalability, consider a hybrid cloud, which lets you use the private cloud for sensitive applications and leverage public cloud infrastructure for resource-intensive tasks. 

6. Consider data migration

Once you have a particular cloud solution, consider how you’ll transfer your previous data. Will you be replicating it, moving a small amount of data at a time, or transferring it in bulk? 

Consider categorizing the data based on importance and sensitivity. Use strong encryption protocols to secure sensitive data during transfer.

7. Choose a cloud provider

Depending on your cloud migration strategy, narrow down your list of cloud hosting providers by considering:

• Support: If you’ve got a small team or lack cloud expertise, you’ll need a cloud provider that offers 24/7/365 support. 
• Multiple data centers: Check if the service provider maintains a data center in the locations closest to your audience. 
• Backup and disaster recovery: Assess how the provider handles accidents — if it supports automatic failover for business continuity. 

Check out Liquid Web’s VMware private cloud if you’re looking for a private cloud with 24/7/365 support, global presence, and redundant infrastructure. 

8. Migrate your systems

After choosing a cloud hosting provider, discuss with their support to see if they recommend any migration tools to perform a successful cloud migration. Once everyone’s on the same stage, start a phased migration. 

Cloud migration strategy: Best practices

A cloud migration strategy offers a roadmap for adopting a cloud platform and continuing your business operations with minimal downtime. Still, if you’re looking to upgrade your IT infrastructure, consider the following best practices.

Leverage cloud-native services

While legacy systems can be rehosted via the cloud without heavy adjustments, they incur a technical debt, which you’ll have to pay sooner or later when the software cannot be maintained. 

Instead, you can take a more forward-looking approach by revising or rewriting your applications to leverage native cloud services. As a result, your IT infrastructure will benefit from the scalability, flexibility, and agency legacy systems cannot offer. 

Opt for hybrid and multi-cloud

If you’re moving your on-premises infrastructure to the cloud, you don’t need to stick to a single cloud vendor. Choose what works for you and set up your preferred configuration. 

For example, if you wish to combine two public cloud providers, you can do so via the multi-cloud setup. Similarly, if you want to keep your organizational data private while leveraging the scalability of the public clouds, you can rely on a hybrid cloud setup to combine a private and public cloud. 

This gives you access to a range of native services different providers offer, letting you enjoy the full benefits of the cloud infrastructure. In fact, hybrid cloud is a new normal since a 2022 Cisco report found that 92 percent of organizations rely on more than two public cloud providers. 

Optimize cloud infrastructure for cost efficiency

Even though businesses turn to the cloud to reduce their IT costs, cloud expenses remain a priority issue for many IT teams. According to a 2023 Flexera report, managing cloud spend was the top cloud challenge for 82 percent of organizations. 

To ensure you don’t join the list of these organizations after the cloud migration, start off on the right foot with a comprehensive plan:

• Track resource utilization: Keep tabs on your cloud resource usage — CPU, memory, storage, and network — via visual dashboards.
• Get notifications: Configure thresholds in the control panel to let the IT team know if you use excessive cloud resources.
• Use automation: Leverage cloud tools, such as VMware Aria Automation, to automate provisioning and avoid human errors.

Final thoughts: Building a robust cloud migration strategy

While cloud migration has its fair share of challenges, a well-crafted cloud migration strategy lets you steer clear of many of those issues. As a result, instead of dealing with post-migration issues, you get to experience the scalability the cloud provides at affordable costs.

That said, if you’ve got a complicated system, migrating to a public cloud without a helping hand might sound overwhelming — especially if you’re looking to comply with HIPAA or PCI-DSS.

If that rings true with you, consider Liquid Web’s VMware private cloud, with its compliant data centers, to help you stay in the good books of auditors. Plus, you’ll also have an expert team on your side in case of a fire.