
The public cloud is a computing model in which third-party providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) make computing resources and services, such as virtual machines, applications, databases, and storage, available and accessible to customers via the public Internet.
AWS Cloud Managed Services Cloud provides you with various benefits, including significant cost savings, increased workforce productivity, operational resilience and continuity of services, along with business agility.
You can deploy your digital assets like data, applications, and other business elements, entirely or partially, to a cloud computing environment through a process called cloud migration.
One of the most common models of cloud migration is the transfer of data and applications from a local data center to a public cloud like AWS cloud
Cloud Migration to AWS is not always as simple as lifting and shifting’ applications from the on-premise data center to the AWS cloud. If you want a deeper cloud integration to take advantage of cloud capabilities, you may have to modify certain applications. You may face challenges, including issues with legacy application migration, data security, and regulatory compliance. You require significant planning and expertise for AWS migration to save time and costs and meet your business objectives.
What is AWS Migration?
AWS Migration is the process of moving data, applications, or other business components from an organization’s on-premises infrastructure to the cloud, or moving them from one cloud service to another.
According to recent stats, it is estimated that by 2020, more than 1/3rd of the data will pass through the cloud.
Best Practices for AWS Migration:
Customers often wonder what some of the best practices are for migrating applications to AWS quickly and confidently. Although the organizational structure and business objectives of every enterprise vary, there are certain patterns and practices the Mass Migration team has learned that tends to ring true for every kind of company.
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of some of these:
- Define a Migration Strategy for IT and business alignment with the cloud at the core of the transformation.
- Establish clear and unambiguous security postures and access controls.
- Train staff on the requisite level of AWS Knowledge. Mid-Size Companies find it very difficult to attract and then retain cloud specialists.
- Outline how business and tech operations will shape-up in AWS.
- Create a detailed Inventory of Applications that you want to migrate and take care of necessary licensing procedures.
- Identity the right Cloud Management Platform that will assist you not only in Migration but also in Managed Services.
- Start with a smaller, low risk but high visibility application such as your corporate website to go to AWS.
- Leverage your Cloud Management Platform to Automate as many tasks as possible to avoid nasty surprises.
- A big threat to Cloud Migration is FUD – Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt but a bigger threat is ” We have always done things this way!”
- Monitor everything with the Cloud Management Platform. Make sure that the Cloud Management Platform has applications as well as infrastructure visualization capabilities.
- Use cloud-native monitoring tools in conjunction with the Cloud Management Platform to get timely notifications and alerts
- Leverage fully managed services such as AWS RDS etc. wherever possible.
While we have given a very curated list of best practices, any migration to AWS cloud has some obvious challenges. We will cover this topic in another blog.