IT infrastructures are bigger and more complicated than ever before, necessitating a deliberate strategy to migrating IT assets and processes to AWS.
Clients that want to migrate to the cloud should think about their current infrastructure and licence status, as well as their business goals. It's also essential to choose a qualified AWS partner that knows your company's intricacies.
While there is no one-size-fits-all cloud migration plan, it is critical to assess your preparedness and put in place a few important processes to ensure a seamless transfer.
Code Enigma has assisted many businesses in making the move to the cloud as an AWS Consulting Partner. We've identified five key best practices that should form the basis of any AWS migration strategy based on our cloud migration expertise.
Let's look at these stages to see how they slot into the bigger picture.
1. Define your driving factors
Determine what you want to get out of the AWS cloud, whether that's digital transformation, lower operating expenses, or more productivity.
The following factors may influence your decision to migrate:
- Business agility
- Security and operational resiliency
- Reduced time-to-market and foster innovation
- Cost-cutting
- Operational resilience
- Developing new technologies and applications
- Consolidation of data centres
- Productivity gains
- Improved collaboration and work effectively across teams
2. Examine your current licence status
Take into account your licence status as well. Many software firms do not enable customers to transfer their licences from on-premises to the cloud, and other publishers may restrict software usage in certain areas. Fines may be severe if you don't comply.
Licensing fees may account for a significant portion of your IT budget, and no company can afford to squander money on software they don't need or utilise. An AWS OLA (Optimization and Licensing Assessment) may help in this situation.
An AWS OLA provides a free assessment of your existing on-premises and cloud architecture, as well as personalised suggestions. You'll know precisely what resources you're utilising for each kind of task, what services you need, and how to save expenses at the conclusion of the evaluation. These insights may help you save money on licencing and run your company more efficiently.
Users may also use the software to simulate various situations and begin a migration proof-of-concept. This enables them to estimate the cost of migrating current licences to the cloud or moving to new services, as well as discover cost-cutting possibilities.
3. Recognise AWS's shared responsibility model
AWS employs a shared responsibility approach, which means that security and compliance in the cloud are shared by AWS and its clients.
AWS protects the worldwide infrastructure that underpins its services by ensuring the security of the cloud environment. Software, hardware, and networking applications make up this infrastructure.
The user, however, is in charge of cloud security. That means it's up to you to secure your data, establish user rights, and safeguard workloads against malware and other forms of cybercrime.
4. Only work with an Amazon Web Services (AWS) certified partner
Only consider collaborating with an authorised and, ideally highly-certified, AWS partner to guarantee compliance and create a cloud migration plan tailored to business requirements.
To obtain their accreditation, AWS partners must complete rigorous training and pass an exam. They understand cloud migration's complexities, from workload allocation to infrastructure performance and cost estimations.
5. Define performance measurements for after the migration
Finally, for post-migration analysis, ensure sure you have quantifiable success criteria. Create performance KPIs that are in line with your company's objectives.
These may include the following:
- Network input/output, data exposures, and service error rates are examples of security KPIs
- Response times, uptime, CPU usage, and service availability are some of the infrastructure performance KPIs
- Customer satisfaction ratings, call rates, error rates, and latency are examples of end-user experience measurements
Keep track of these numbers both before and after you migrate to the cloud. For example, service error rates should be the same as or lower than before you moved your workloads to AWS. Use the pre-migration baseline to assess the effectiveness of your migration plan and make any necessary changes.
As Select AWS Partners, we offer our experience on how to approach a successful AWS migration plan, as well as the resources available to make your move to the cloud go smoothly.