5 Key Phases of a Successful Cloud Migration

Noted cloud analyst David Linthicum recently predicted that 2017 will be the year of the “great migration”.

Enterprises will begin to migrate significantly more on-premise workloads than in previous years as they search for the right infrastructure solution to fit their business needs.  We at Leaseweb and WSM International agree with this prediction, having seen for ourselves a significant increase in inquiries about cloud migration, as well as the accompanying questions which arise when businesses begin to consider what it would actually take to make the switch.

While we recognize that migration can seem daunting, we have developed a comprehensive, and proven, approach to cloud migration based on 5 distinct phases.

1. Discovery – Begin by focusing on the applications in your environment and the associated requirements. The better you understand your current workloads and requirements, the easier the process will be.
2. Suitability – Analyze and review individual application workloads to determine which workload should move to the cloud, which shouldn’t, and why. This also helps with creating priorities for the move. The result is a manageable set of candidates destined for the cloud and prioritized for migration.
3. Mapping – This helps identify the right type of cloud for each workload based on the business, technical, and functional needs.
4. Workload Migration – A number of methods, both automated and manual, are often required to handle the variety of operating systems, hypervisors, applications, and data your business is migrating.
5. Cloud Enablement – It is important to ensure that the proper support is in place for the service levels, security, and performance considerations of the newly transitioned Infrastructure.

This sequence, based on our work with a broad range of clients over the years, follows a logical flow that is designed to mitigate risk and minimize the stress involved in migration. But, any successful migration requires more than just a project plan, it requires something more, experience. With a complex and rapidly evolving technology, it is important to assemble a migration team and work with a cloud service provider with the resources, track record, and knowledge of best practices to guide you successfully to your new destination. With the right partners and the right plan, migrating workloads can be far easier than you think.

Find out more about planning a cloud migration on March 6^th at our upcoming webinar.