Who Uses Cloud Migration Software?
Migration architect: A migration architect is the main persona who will lead the cloud migration project. At the system level, the migration architect will be responsible for planning the migration and oversee the entire process till project completion. The architect will need to define necessary refactoring required, design migration plans and strategies, and migration priorities.
Database architects: As data is being migrated into the cloud, database architects can use the software to ensure that the right databases are being migrated and that there are no issues and gaps in the data migration process. Database architects will closely work with cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure to develop and design resilient plans for database migration. They act as a support team for the implementation project.
IT teams: The IT team of the organization will primarily oversee the cloud migration project, hence will be on hands with the software. This team will need to ensure business requirements (such as budgets, SLAs, KPIs are being met), devise long-term IT strategy plans, and identify operational requirements.
Cloud service providers: Cloud service providers can offer cloud migration options. The cloud being migrated too needs to be reliable, scalable, consistent, and available as required. Some of the biggest names in cloud platforms include AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud, and several others.
Business owners: Migrating from on-premises infrastructure to cloud or even between clouds is an investment decision. Business owners need to ensure that there is a significant return on investment (ROI) in the long run, and hence are deeply involved with the cloud migration process. Business owners need to observe the total cost of ownership (TCO) in order to support a business case for migration.
Challenges with Cloud Migration Software
Cloud migration software services can come with their own set of challenges.
Migration of large databases: One of the main challenges that the software faces is the huge task of moving large workloads and databases to the cloud. In order to function in the cloud, several times databases need to be moved to another platform to ensure optimized and efficient cloud computing capabilities. Moving large data sets into or between clouds is a time-consuming task since massive databases take a long time to move via the internet. Cloud migration, therefore, is a time-consuming activity for large databases.
Ensuring business continuity in real time: A downtime for any organization can cost billions of dollars if not brought back to working capacity well in time. Sectors like banking, healthcare, stock markets, and others cannot afford downtime, which could cause drastic negative impacts. In such a situation, cloud migration services need to be able to support migrating applications into the cloud platforms in real time, without impacting business continuity. The migration service should be able to work in the background supporting data transfer to the cloud, as employees continue working on their daily functions.
Costs for migration: Although moving to cloud computing will help in reducing costs, the costs associated with using migration software are significant. Some of the main costs include rewriting legacy application architecture to suit the cloud, investment costs associated with people and tools to ensure migration happens smoothly, bandwidth costs, training costs, licensing costs, and several others.
Cloud sprawl: One of the biggest challenges that companies face is that in the excitement of moving to the cloud, they end up moving entire databases and applications without having a plan in place. This leads to cloud sprawl, wherein an organization does not have a complete view of all the cloud infrastructure during migration. This happens because the organization is migrating several cloud instances, providers, services, and therefore is unable to view or maintain accountability for all cloud components.
How to Buy Cloud Migration Software
Choosing a cloud migration software is an extremely important task when embarking on a cloud transformation journey. The best cloud migration tool will ensure that all the requirements of migrating to the cloud are met, the data has been safely moved, processes have been streamlined and the firm can continue business processes without any halts or negative impacts. However, there are a few important steps that need to be taken before choosing a cloud migration software:
Develop a plan of action: This is the key step before embarking on a cloud migration plan. Having an understanding of the present position and what is to be achieved from this migration will help the buyer in defining KPIs such as response time, compute usage, memory usage, and others. This plan outlines what are the goals of the migration to be accomplished. KPIs that were developed for application in legacy infrastructure might not apply once the migration is completed, hence illuminating the best KPIs is important in this step. In addition, the plan needs to be holistic—account for several factors such as timelines, priorities, funding, resource availability, and others.
Identify applications to be moved: A company needs to do a deep dive into all their applications, workloads, software, and services to identify which of them need to be migrated. It is not necessary that all the applications need to be moved in one shot or need to be moved at all. Some applications might perform better on a public cloud than a private cloud or even on legacy infrastructure—identifying such differences is key. It is good to ask questions such as—is a redesign of applications required and if yes, what is the level of complexity required, which is the best cloud environment for different applications, does the cloud service provider also provide cloud migration capabilities, and so on. Answering these questions will help determine what should or shouldn't be migrated.
Identify the cloud service provider: Choosing the right cloud provider is a necessary step since these providers will help to guide during the migration process. The provider should support cloud migration at a global scale if required at a later point in time. In addition, the buyer needs to choose a single cloud provider or if they plan to go multi or hybrid cloud.
Ensuring data security: As the data transfer process happens, it could be a potential point of security and data breaches, causing a company’s data to be accessed by unknown parties. Managing this risk is crucial.
Execute cloud migration: Once the above steps are completed, the migration process can begin. Migration will depend on the complexity of the architecture of applications, data, workloads, and others.
Once the above steps have been completed, firms can opt for a cloud migration software that will help them achieve their cloud computing requirements.
Compare Cloud Migration Software Products
Create a long list
This step involves creating a long list of cloud migration software providers that assist buyers on their cloud migration journey. Some key factors to consider include system automation, tracking server volumes, efficiently managing a company’s database, striving to minimize downtime, security support, data privacy, and others. Some other features include monitoring capabilities and alert systems. The best cloud migration tools help to move and synchronize files during the entire migration process. Some tools may also have disaster recovery and error and bug tracing as a feature; some are complex while others offer very basic services.
Create a short list
Once the long list of cloud monitoring tools has been identified, it is time to remove software that does not meet all the business criteria. For this, it is important to fall back on the assessment made earlier on what is to be done before choosing a migration service. Based on the assessment, buyers can further shorten their list and only choose those software vendors that meet all the business requirements.
Conduct demos
Once the list has been reduced to a couple of vendors, buyers may begin to request a demo. The demo will give them an idea of how the cloud migration software will work once the actual process begins, and the time required to move applications to the cloud. Having a demo on resources and applications is a good way to ensure the best fit. At this step, the buyer should ask several questions to the vendor as to the benefits, after-service support, staff training, and other additional features that can be provided.
Selection of Cloud Migration Software
Choose a selection team
Choosing the right team to work together on choosing cloud migration software is a critical part of the process. This team will be in charge of identifying pain points to finally overseeing the entire implementation and migration process. The team should include a mix of different personas who have the required skills, interest, and time. Some roles include project manager, system owner, decision makers, and others. From the technical team, there should be an IT admin, a cloud admin or engineer, and a technical lead.
Negotiation
When choosing cloud migration software, bringing in negotiation factors is very important especially on pricing and licensing. When migrating to the cloud, some software publishers allow buyers to move licenses from on premises to the cloud or between cloud environments. But this might not always be the case, which could put the buyers at a non compliance risk for the remainder of the contract and would require purchasing a cloud license for specific software. Hence, it is important to negotiate to include possible additional costs that might come in for the remainder of the contract. Other ways to negotiate include opting for multi-year contracts.
Final decision
Once all the steps are complete, the final decision is made weighing all factors and scenarios. Cloud migration providers can try to move smaller applications first for a small set of sample users. Based on this feedback, it can be used for enterprise-wide cloud migration.
