What is a Cloud Migration? (And is it Worth It?)

Terms like digital transformation, modern work, cloud migration, and cloud solution are often thrown around willy-nilly as if everyone is just expected to already know what they are. However, these buzzwords don’t do a great job of communicating what they mean, and it can be really frustrating. Fret no more though, because today I am going to do my best to show you what a cloud migration is (the other buzzwords will be addressed in future posts!) and whether it is worth it for your organization or not.

TechTarget defines a cloud migration as the process of moving data, applications, or other business elements to a cloud computing environment – and this is a great starting point for understanding cloud migrations, but let’s dissect that a little bit. There are many different cloud migration strategies that one can follow depending on how much time, effort, and money they are willing to dedicate to it.

One of the simplest and most common options is to do a ‘lift and shift’ migration. This is where an organizations on-premises workloads, such as their file servers, domain controllers (identity providers), web servers, application servers, and other workloads are essentially taken in their current form and moved into a public cloud like Microsoft Azure, AWS, or GCP without making almost any changes to the underlying infrastructure. For example, if you have a file server that you use at your office, the server is cloned and put into a virtual machine in the cloud. These cloud VMs are referred to as infrastructure as a service (IaaS). From there, very little is changed and now you get to realize some of the benefits of being in the cloud – such as easy access from anywhere, money savings since you don’t have to purchase and maintain the underlying hardware and time savings since the cloud provider takes care of all the IT needs and (in some cases) even the operating system and security patching. Sometimes this process is also referred to as ‘rehosting.’

Another option is to do a ‘refactor’ migration. Sometimes also described as ‘lift, tinker, and shift,’ this is where you have to do a bit of tweaking to your workloads before migrating them into the cloud. While this takes some extra work when compared to a ‘lift and shift’ migration, you also get to reap more of the benefits the cloud has to offer you. Oftentimes, this strategy allows you to make use of some of the platform as a service (PaaS) offerings that are available from your cloud provider. Going back to our file server example, this migration strategy would allow you to migrate your file needs into something like Azure Files or Blob storage. What do you care? Well, this means that you get a feature rich file experience where the majority of operations and management is handled by the provider. In the PaaS model, the provider takes care of underlying hardware needs (power, networking, maintenance, etc.), operating system patching, security patching, installations, ongoing software maintenance, and more. All you have to do is set the PaaS up, migrate your files into it, and have at it!

While there are many nuanced cloud migration strategies, let’s explore one more: a ‘replacement’ cloud migration. This usually ends up with you using one or more software as a service (SaaS) tools. This is a good approach when all of your needs are not being entirely met by your current system. This could be missing features, bad maintenance, expensive costs, etc. In this migration strategy, you replace your current system with a well-vetted, and competent SaaS provider’s SaaS app. With SaaS, you simply use the app and are only responsible for account-specific configurations. The SaaS provider handles everything else. Again, looking to our file server example, think of SaaS solutions such as Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, etc. The benefits of SaaS are that the are very simple to use and all underlying hardware and software are entirely managed by the provider. The downside of this, however, can be decreased flexibility, decreased control over your data, and/or security concerns. For example, certain industries may have to meet compliance requirements with their customers’ data that some SaaS providers don’t meet, or a SaaS provider may push an update that results in service degradation or entire functionality loss until they are able to fix the issue.

So which strategy is for you? Well, (as you may have guessed) it depends! Also, it’s worth noting that depending on your organization’s unique needs and workloads, you may implement multiple strategies for your different workloads. For example, you may have some legacy applications that you are not ready to refactor to being PaaS compatible and so those will go straight to cloud VMs, allowing you to realize those benefits but keep control of the operating system and other parts of the workload that you need control over. Simultaneously, it may be determined that your file server needs are fairly basic and so you can use a SaaS solution here that would greatly outperform your current on-premises file server.

Furthermore, is a cloud migration right for your organization? Well, again it can depend a little bit on what your workload is, but in most cases the answer is a resounding YES. Cloud computing is the way of the future for many of the reasons described above, and if your workloads can be migrated, your organization will almost surely benefit from the different cloud compute options out there – enhanced productivity, access from anywhere, better uptime (no more annoying outages!), better controlled and predictable costs, enhanced opportunities for innovation, improved scalability as your organization grows, and so much more.

Here at Cyber Husky, we take the definition of cloud migration a bit further than simply moving on-prem servers to a cloud provider like Microsoft Azure, AWS, or GCP – we include all business processes and needs in this migration. When we do a cloud migration, we look to move the entire organization’s processes, workloads, and other needs into the cloud, and for workloads that are not capable of being migrated, we set up remote access for them and help develop a plan for migrating as soon as possible. When a cloud migration is done properly, your data, processes, workloads – your organization as a whole can perform all of its technology functions remotely. For many organizations, they will only need their PCs/laptops/Chromebooks/etc. and an Internet connection – everything else will be accessible from in the cloud from those devices! We architect, engineer, and implement tailor-made cloud solutions for your organization – making sure you understand everything, every step of the way – and that you are fully satisfied with the end result. We also offer ongoing, predictably priced (on a monthly basis) managed IT services where we essentially become your IT department. What sets us apart from other providers like this? We have the expertise to not only manage your technology needs, but we are also experienced at migrating organizations into the future (the cloud!) and managing the needs that come along with it.

If you are considering a cloud migration, contact us for a meeting and we will help you understand what a migration would look like for your specific organization as well as answer any questions you may have.  These meetings are not ‘salesy’ and simply function to help you better understand all the implications of upgrading your company.

Have a great day and don’t forget to come back next month for another business technology post!