Cloud is about how you do computing, not where you do computing

Paul Maritz

It gives us a clear potential on how we can incorporate cloud storage into our day-to-day life. It has given human beings the privilege to access control, monitor their day-to-day work in real time. With the help of effective cloud migration strategies, businesses can put their best foot forward by managing their data, IT resources, and applications from any corner of the world.

Since well-known companies like Salesforce and Amazon have introduced the concept of cloud in the market, the cloud adoption rates have been rising like anything. The year 2020 can be said as a game changer as more and more enterprises have been reported using the cloud. As per the statistics of the 2021 Flexera State of Cloud report, 90% of the companies are expecting Cloud uses to increase in the upcoming years as well.

Let’s understand the concept of cloud migration strategy in-depth!

What Is a Cloud Migration Strategy?

Simply put, a cloud migration strategy can be considered as an organisation’s plan to transfer all of its digital resources to the cloud. The resources involve the infrastructures of the company including data, services, applications, and more. The first step towards migration is to formulate a robust cloud migration strategy.  Considering the market today, the majority of the companies have already invested in at least one cloud component and legacy modernization tools in the architecture.

There are many ways to migrate the applications to the cloud. Here are some common guidelines that will make it easy to regulate the whole process.  In this post,  you will go through 5 different strategies an organisation utilises to migrate their applications to the cloud.

5 Cloud Migration Strategies for Effective Legacy Applications Modernization

Rehosting

Formerly referred to as lift and shift strategy,  rehosting entails moving an exact replica of the existing infrastructure to the cloud. This strategy is profitable for small-scale businesses with simple and easy workloads that are still figuring out their long-term goals for services and scalability. It is also perfect for businesses whose infrastructure primarily utilises virtual computers.

Some of the other benefits of this strategy is it is an affordable option (not in the long run) as businesses can save cost from moving physical infrastructure to the cloud. Plus, business leaders and marketers can avail possible immediate benefits of cloud computing. Talking about the issues with rehosting, it ignores many advantages of adopting cloud-native, especially flexibility. Still, it is one of the fastest as a migration strategy to implement.

Refactoring

Refactoring, as contrast to rehosting, assumes that the application is optimised for the cloud architecture. Although minor changes are made to the apps, their fundamental design remains the same. Due to the invasive nature of the method, the refactored application must undergo extensive testing to ensure there is no breakdown in functioning. Because of this, refactoring is one of the most time-consuming approaches. Considering the benefits of this strategy, it is a highly scalable and resilient approach that leverages cloud-native or multi-cloud solutions.

Repurchasing

Formerly known as drop and shop strategy, repurchasing simply refers to a decision to move to another product. Sometimes, portions of legacy architecture, such as an in-house customer relationship management (CRM) system prove to be expensive and difficult to maintain. In such circumstances, it makes sense to move this feature entirely to an existing cloud solution such as Salesforce’s cloud-based CRM system. Simply put, this strategy is used when the existing system becomes unmanageable. The only drawback related to this approach is that both employees and end users may need to be instructed on how to utilise a new third-party system, which takes time and money.

Rebuilding

As the name depicts, rebuilding is all about discarding legacy applications and building them again with access to cloud-based resources. Since Rebuild is a PaaS-based solution, expert knowledge of both your current apps and business procedures along with cloud services, is required. The biggest obstacle here is to adjust with application users that are forced to use a new app. With this strategy, you gain cloud computing benefits like cost savings, legacy modernization of an application, enhancement in productivity of a developer, etc.

Replacing

The last strategy is to replace a legacy system with a SaaS solution that has identical or similar capabilities. This is usually the situation when a SaaS firm gives a better solution than you can accomplish yourself. This strategy is perfect when you are swapping out apps that perform typical business applications like email, content management, etc. or when legacy applications are not cloud-compatible. Pros of this strategy include – less administrative overhead, cost-effective, flexibility, and support.

Key Advantages of the Cloud to your Business:

  • Maintaining legacy systems in their original state is expensive so migrating to the cloud helps in reducing needless spending.
  • The cloud offers improved security and data protection. There is always a risk of data loss and other issues when keeping data on ageing on premise systems.
  • Cloud Migration helps in increasing the system scalability and growth speed. It accelerates the digital transformation process too. It also lets you access data remotely from multiple locations.

Develop an Efficient Migration Strategy!

Many times, legacy applications and legacy IT infrastructure adversely affect the business. Effective cloud migration strategies let you avail benefits from modernising your applications and migrating to the cloud. Moving to the cloud offers significant savings when compared to the high expenses of maintaining and updating hardware and data centres, which may become obsolete over time. Hence cloud migration is an excellent solution for organisations looking for digital transformation.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *