Cloud Myths: Migrating to the cloud is quick and easy (Pill 2 of 5 / Cloud Pills)

The idea that migration to the cloud is simple, straightforward and rapid is a wrong assumption. It’s a common misconception of business stakeholders that generates delays, budget overruns and technical dept. A migration requires laborious planning, technical expertise and a rigorous process.

Migrations, especially cloud migrations, are not one-size-fits-all journeys. One of the most critical steps is under evaluation, under budget and under consideration. The evaluation phase, where existing infrastructure, applications, database, network and the end-to-end estate are evaluated and mapped to a cloud strategy, is crucial to ensure the success of cloud migration. Additional factors such as security, compliance, and system dependencies increase the complexity of cloud migration.

A misconception regarding lift-and-shits is that they are fast and cheap. Moving applications to the cloud without changes does not provide the capability to optimise costs and performance, leading to high running and operation costs. Replatforming and refactoring can offer better performance and running costs, but only if an evaluation phase is done correctly. More or less, the cloud maturity and governance level dictate cloud migration's success in the long run.

The most common challenges during a cloud migration are related to downtime, data transfer, testing & validation and skill gaps. If downtime risks can be managed with detailed planning and backup strategy, skills gaps are more complex and would impact not only technical departments. For example, the financial team might need to be educated on how to use or trigger different actions. Testing & Validation is a post-migration action that is not always considered to ensure the application runs correctly in the new environment.

A migration process of multiple phases is crucial to ensure the success of a cloud migration. The four key phases that should be part of a migration are:

>Workload assessment for prioritisation and evaluation

>Identify the right cloud migration strategy per application type

>Use migration tools to streamline the process (e.g. AWS Migration Hub / Azure Migration)

>Run upskilling programs or identify partners to execute the migration and support the transition

Each cloud vendor provider migration framework should be incorporated into company processes and protocols (AWS - , Microsoft Azure - , Google Cloud - ).

A cloud migration is not cheap, simple, or quick. However, a seamless transition to the cloud can be achieved with a laborious and well-defined plan. This would maximize the benefits provided by the cloud to the business.

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