Cloud migration

Cloud migration is the process of moving a company’s digital assets, services, databases, IT resources, and applications either partially, or wholly, into the cloud. Cloud migration is also about moving from one cloud to another.

Companies wishing to move on from outdated and increasingly inefficient legacy infrastructures, such as aging servers or potentially unreliable firewall appliances, or to abandon hardware or software solutions that are no longer operating at optimum capacity, are now turning to the cloud to experience the benefits of cloud computing. This is why so many organizations are, at the very least, making a partial migration to the cloud.

We know that cloud migration is critical for achieving real-time and updated performance and efficiency. As such, the process requires careful analysis, planning and execution to ensure the cloud solution's compatibility with your business requirements.

When considering your strategy for migrating to the cloud, it’s important to understand that it’s not just about getting there, it’s also about what you do when you get there. For instance, what are your options for rebuilding applications so they can perform optimally in cloud? The process of cloud migration is making companies ask the question: what is application modernization?

There are many questions to be answered along the way, and businesses of all sizes require assistance in making their cloud journeys. Consequently, many services firms can make a strong case for their lift-and-shift cloud migration capabilities, or their classic modernization services, such as automated language translation and conventional re-platforming.

Before making any moves, it’s essential that companies truly understand what’s involved.

Moving to the cloud can be a transformative shift for your entire business, so it’s wise to begin by taking an end-to-end look at the cloud journey. This will help to confirm which capabilities and activities are needed to execute effectively across the three main cloud migration steps.

These are the key cloud migration steps:

1. Define your strategy and build your business case: the first question to be answered is, “What’s the business value to be gained by moving to the cloud?”

   A move to the cloud is far from just a technology exercise. It needs to be rooted in business outcomes—specific objectives the company wants to achieve.

   Based on these objectives you can begin to develop a cloud migration strategy and the business case for the move. A key element of this strategy is determining which applications will be moved to the cloud, and to which type of cloud environment, as well as what the infrastructure ultimately should look like.

   For instance, some apps are perfect candidates for the cloud—such as those that have a variable load, are public facing with a global reach, or are planned for a near-term modernization. Others are not—those that are simply too hard or risky to migrate, or ones that just won’t provide the return on investment. Determining this at the outset is vital to a successful migration.

2. Discovery and assessment: what to move, where to move it, when to move it

   Managing risk is a key component of any business. While businesses expect improved flexibility, cost, and control, anticipating how your applications might perform due to significant infrastructure changes also needs to be kept top of mind.

   Businesses need to understand their current state through discovery and assessment – scanning and assessing their existing infrastructure, application and data landscape to identify their current architecture and determine the most appropriate applications and data to migrate to cloud.

   Through application discovery, dependency mapping, and risk assessments based on current usage, as well as optional pre-migration predictive analysis, the Cloud Migration Assessment enables migration planners to make informed decisions, helping minimize risk while ensuring service level agreements are maintained after cloud migration.

3. Cloud migration: here’s where the heavy lifting occurs—actually moving things to the cloud

   This typically involves modernizing existing applications for the cloud, developing new cloud-native applications, and transforming the architecture and infrastructure.
   The goal: eventually creating an entirely new technology operating model and culture that enables the company to innovate more quickly, effectively and efficiently.

   Automated management and migration tools are critical to executing a smooth migration. They help not only to speed the move, but also deliver high quality, consistency and repeatability. When teamed with specialized skills and solution accelerators, they become part of a cloud migration factory that can accelerate the journey even more. Also critical in this phase is a robust cloud journey management plan to keep the effort on track.

How we can help make it a smooth move

Accenture’s Cloud Migration Services provide an evolutionary set of services, from strategy to execution, to help our clients transform existing applications, enabling realization of “future-ready” business outcomes. Our holistic approach is underpinned by the recognition that effective modernization uptake requires a flexible blend of right-sized options with varying risk and return profiles.

Our enterprise application migration services provide detailed, long-ranging, robust methodologies for migrating large application portfolios to cloud platforms—and is scalable for single to multiple apps. Our tested, reliable tools can help you with application inventory, assessment, code analysis, migration planning and execution.