Seven strategies you should know for your cloud migration

Many companies are currently discussing the migration of individual applications or an entire IT environment to the public cloud of the leading hyperscalers. A cloud migration can be understood as a physical move of data, applications and IT processes from a data center, which you either operate yourself or have rented from an external provider, to the cloud. A move from a private or hybrid cloud model to the public cloud is also referred to as a cloud migration.

Just like moving house, where boxes need to be packed, labeled and stacked, a migration to the cloud requires some preparation and planning. First and foremost, this includes selecting the environment or applications that will be allowed to change location. In addition, the choice of migration type is critical.

In this blog article, we will introduce you to the different migration strategies. After reading this article, you will understand what a cloud migration is, what types there are and which strategy is most suitable for your migration.

#2: Replatform or also "Lift & Reshape"
The colloquial "lift & reshape" strategy refers to the migration of an application to the cloud, which also involves optimization. The aim here is to use the advantages of the newly gained cloud functions for the application itself.

#3: Repurchase or "drop and store"
As the name of the migration strategy suggests, this involves the repurchase of a product, usually switching from a traditional license to a SaaS model (Software-as-a-Service model).
For example, if you migrate your local CRM system to a provider such as Salesforce, Hubspot or others, you buy a new product, but one that is operated for you on-demand in the cloud.

#4: Rehosting or "Lift & Shift"
"Lift & Shift" represents one of the most well-known migration models. This can be mainly attributed to the quick implementation of a migration according to this strategy. In rehosting, your application is moved to the cloud without any changes. You take advantage of the cloud environment, such as cost transparency or scalability, but do not perform any optimizations on the application itself.
A concrete example on the AWS world is migrating your on-premises Oracle database to Oracle on an EC2 instance in the AWS cloud.

#5: Relocate ("Lift & Shift" at the hypervisor level")
Relocate pattern migration describes moving infrastructure to the public cloud without buying new hardware, rewriting applications, or changing your existing operations.
So far, so good. Specific to this migration strategy, however, is that it can only be deployed VMware Cloud from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which only supports virtual machine (VM) compatibility and workload portability between your on-premises environment and AWS. Sounds complicated, but you can remember: it's all like "Lift & Shift" just exclusively for VMware applications.
An example is migrating your hypervisor hosting your Oracle database to VMware Cloud on AWS.

#6: Retain
With a retain migration, you keep your applications in the source environment, meaning the existing data center or operationally running cloud environment. This can include applications that need extensive refactoring and therefore you want to move them at a later date. Legacy applications that you want to keep are also included.

#7: Retire
Last but not least, Retire is available as a strategy for your cloud migration. Similar to the previous Retain strategy, this is also a more passive type of migration. Here, you decommission or remove applications because they are no longer needed within your source environment.

Having discussed the various strategy options for cloud migrations, we now turn our attention to selecting the appropriate strategy. Which strategy will enable you to migrate your IT environment or applications to the cloud in the best possible way?

Cloud migrations are among the key components of cloud strategies. The relevant hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services have therefore developed programs that enable specialists and customers to analyze the possibilities and potential of cloud migrations. Particular attention is paid to which environments and applications are suitable for cloud migration, both in terms of operation and cost.

One such program is the Amazon Migration Evaluator (formerly TSO Logic), which can accelerate the decision-making process for a cloud migration and make it transparent. The first step is to collect relevant data from your IT history as well as from your current operations.

Based on your data, you will receive an individual assessment. This includes a cost estimate as well as an analysis of the expected savings in various migration scenarios.
These documents provide clear direction for specialists and your experts to initiate migration planning. In addition, the results of the AWS Migration Evaluator also serve to support your management's decision making.

In conclusion, as mentioned at the beginning, migration involves thorough and comprehensive preparations and analysis. In addition to the right strategy and planning, having the right expert at your side is also a key component.
As part of the Public Cloud Group, Innovations ON has already carried out more than 300 cloud migrations. We cover all company sizes, industries and most importantly, all migration strategies. We are happy to advise you and your team on the preparations, planning and subsequent implementation. Together we will find the right path to the public cloud.