A cloud-first mindset continues to gain traction for established enterprises, and there are increasing investments from small and medium enterprises to take advantage of its benefits.
The cloud migration services market is expected to reach $448.34 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 28.89 per cent over the forecast period 2021-2026.
Enterprises are transferring their daily operations to the cloud to save money and increase efficiency. Maintaining physical gear and networking on-site considerably increase IT and network capital expenses, particularly when it comes to maintenance and replacements.
Moving data and apps to the cloud help save money while increasing cooperation. It also aids disaster risk management and business continuity because the servers, data, and applications are not tethered to the primary office.
There are three motivations for moving an application to the cloud, and each might influence your migration method selection.
- User agility and control: Most application teams now rely heavily on IT to deliver the machines they require to test, develop, and integrate workloads. IT workers might take days, if not weeks, to make equipment available. Application teams migrate to the cloud to improve their agility since a cloud-based architecture allows for machine deployment swiftly.
- Scalability when needed: IT teams usually struggle to keep up with the growth in their infrastructure, especially when demand for application load spikes unexpectedly. Organisations are looking for a solution to avoid planning or spending ahead of time for such surges in demand, and the cloud can help.
- Innovative trends such as big data: It’s challenging to arrange high-performance computers, massive data, complicated event processing, and mobile services. Cloud computing allows enterprises to test, develop, and experiment with breakthrough technologies on a pay-as-you-go basis.
But cloud migration if not done appropriately or in a way that does not meet company goals, the migration process may be intimidating and costly. Companies must adopt a comprehensive approach to determine which apps and services to migrate and how the transfer will impact the enterprise’s licencing, services, and productivity. The “6Rs of Move” are stages and alternatives that go into planning a migration.
The 6Rs of migration
The planning step of a migration strategy determines what is possible in the migration environment, what interdependencies are associated with moving elements, what will migrate, and what will remain. The migration process includes Retiring, Retaining, Rehosting, Replatforming, Refactoring, and Re-architecting, which are known as the 6Rs of migration.
Retire
You may evaluate the value of a product, service, or application by identifying everything in your company environment that has the potential to migrate. Identify all users of each migration element and determine what is and is not being used. Determining what you can retire can also help you save money on items that should have been phased out of usage before.
Retain
Some aspects of your surroundings may not move and will be kept in place. There are various reasons to support an in-house element, such as riding out depreciation or because the cost of migration is too expensive. Your organisation can preserve more value by employing the application or service on the ground. A typical hybrid cloud service is to keep some IT components on-premise.
Rehost
Rehosting, often known as “lift and shift,” is a popular migration approach. It is a simple solution for cloud migration that transports apps, software, and data to the cloud with minimal effort. Rehosting is typical for first migrations because it entails relocating existing physical and virtual servers into an IaaS solution. The infrastructure traditionally found on sites, such as servers, storage, and networking gear, is hosted by the IaaS model, which provides a virtualised environment via a hypervisor layer. Once a cloud-based business is in place, rehosting may lead to re-architecting in the future.
Replatform
Legacy systems in well-established firms are frequently far too complex to migrate to IaaS cloud platforms. Rather than modifying the programs’ core, virtual machines imitate them, allowing old IT systems to be compatible with current cloud technology. Replatforming is a considerably better alternative for firms that cannot rebuild their IT legacy systems during cloud migration, even though it can be costly.
Repurchase
When feasible, repurchasing is an excellent and quick approach to getting cloud-based SaaS customised to your company’s needs by the cloud provider. SaaS encapsulates your company’s current data and applications in a cloud-based solution that aids in the administration of operations such as human resources (HR), customer relationship management (CRM), and content management (CMS).
Refactor and Re-architect
The requirement to refactor, and re-architect systems are frequently motivated by a business’s desire to add functionality or increase scalability. Agility, business continuity, general productivity, and cooperation are typically improved through refactoring/re-architecting. However, this is the most expensive solution and is generally used after an initial migration using other methods, such as rehosting.
Deduction
The technological environment is quickly changing, and more businesses are turning to cloud-based solutions to meet their objectives and maintain healthy operations. The advantages of moving to the cloud outweigh the costs of maintaining and upgrading expensive and frequently obsolete technology and data centres. A cloud-based migration is a fantastic alternative, but businesses must analyse their choices and choose the best path.
* The second edition of the Velocity Data And Analytics Summit will be held on May 17 and 18, 2022, in Dubai. For more information and to register, please visit: https://velocityda.com/
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