Why Move to the Cloud?
Legacy on-premise infrastructure is rigid and expensive to maintain. Cloud migration offers the promise of elastic resources—paying only for what you use and scaling up instantly during traffic spikes. However, simply 'lifting and shifting' your servers often results in higher costs without the benefits.
Successful migration involves <a href='/service-details/cloud-solutions'>Modernization</a>. This might mean breaking a monolith into microservices, adopting serverless functions, or moving from self-hosted databases to managed services like RDS or Cosmos DB.
Security in the cloud is a shared responsibility. While providers like AWS and Azure secure the data center, you are responsible for securing your data and applications. Understanding this boundary is key to a secure cloud posture.
The 6 Rs of Migration
Amazon Web Services (AWS) defines 6 strategies for migration.
Rehost (Lift and shift): Move quickly, optimize later.
Replatform (Lift, tinker, and shift): Move to managed services.
Refactor (Re-architect): Rewrite for cloud-native benefits.
Repurchase: Move to a SaaS alternative.
Retire: Turn off unneeded applications.
Retain: Keep some apps on-premise (Hybrid).
Migration Roadmap
1. Assessment Phase
Catalog all your applications and dependencies. Identify which apps are 'cloud-ready' and which need significant rework. Estimate costs using cloud pricing calculators.
2. Pilot Migration
Start small. Move a non-critical application first to test your landing zone, security groups, and networking configuration. Learn from this process before moving mission-critical workloads.
3. Optimization
Once in the cloud, the work isn't done. Use cost management tools to identify idle resources. Implement auto-scaling policies to ensure you aren't paying for capacity you don't need at night.
Key Takeaway
Implementing these strategies correctly can lead to 40% growth in digital efficiency.
