Cloud computing is one major technology that is transforming businesses across different industries. Apart from enabling your business to adapt to the changing tech practices in a seamless manner, cloud computing positions businesses to overcome operational challenges and gain a competitive advantage, which enhances business growth and expansion.

For these and many other reasons, companies are shifting from on-premise models to cloud, and so should your company. However, the primary concern is how to migrate on-premises to the cloud effectively. This guide will give you all the insights about on-premises to cloud migration, including the step-by-step process, benefits, and tips, among many other valuable insights.

What is on-premises to cloud migration?

Cloud infrastructure is a technology that enables businesses to store and access data through the Internet. This, in turn, offers a high level of flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency approach to business operations.

In simple terms, cloud solutions create an agile environment where businesses can adapt to the changing market trends and practices easily, a move that accelerates business growth and expansion.

This is contrary to the traditional or on-premise approach where businesses keep and manage all their software and hardware resources on-site. This approach gives business owners ultimate control of all the activities within the business environment. However, this approach limits the business in terms of scalability and flexibility. What’s more, the recovery process in case of a disaster is complex under an on-premise approach. This is why many businesses are migrating from on-premise to cloud.

Different On-premises-to-cloud migration methods/processes

While performing on-premises-to-cloud migration, there are different procedures or methods you can follow. It all depends on the nature of the process you want to execute. These methods or processes include the following:

• Replacing

This migration approach involves moving existing data on an on-premise app to cloud-based SaaS (Software as a service) apps which are formed by third parties. The other applications are then rendered useless, hence discarded. This method is effective in a situation where an app has been interfered with or affected in different ways, hence the need for third-party service provision.

• Refactoring

Also known as rip & replace or redesign, this strategy is all about restructuring and rewriting the app’s architecture. This can happen after or before the migration process. This approach requires a high level of expertise and it takes more time to accomplish all the processes successfully.

The advantage of the refactoring approach is that you get a chance to rework or redesign an app from scratch while taking cloud computing services into consideration. You can then integrate the emerging and advanced CSP – cloud service provider features.

While the upfront costs of refactoring can be higher, the cloud services will operate seamlessly in the long run, thus giving you an easy time with your app.

This approach is best when migrating many apps and workloads to give you an easy time in the end.

• Rehosting

This is the simplest and most seamless on-premises-to-cloud migration method. Also known as lift and shift or forklift migration, rehosting involves moving workloads, apps, schema, and data to the IaaS cloud from the data center without changing anything.

Although this is the easiest method of on-premises-to-cloud migration, it hinders you from exploiting the migrated app since nothing has been modified to align with the cloud services.

• Replatforming

Also known as move & improve or revise method, this approach is a combination of refactoring and rehosting strategies. It is all about adjusting an app while maintaining some core features and functionalities.

This method is ideal when performing on-premises infrastructure migration to IaaS or PaaS service. For instance, when adjusting how an application works with the database.

Benefits of on-premises-to-cloud migration

So, why would a company or business opt for on-premises-to-cloud migration? Below are the benefits or advantages of cloud migration from on-premises:

• Better elasticity and scalability

To some extent, businesses experience fluctuations in resource requirements. Without a proper strategy, it becomes complex to adjust based on the changing requirements. However, with cloud services, you can seamlessly respond to the changing resource requirements and meet your business objectives. For instance, increasing storage, memory, and computing where necessary.

Above all, you can easily scale the resources either down or up with cloud computing based on business demand. On-premise infrastructure cannot actualize all these, hence limiting an organization in different ways.

• Better accessibility

Modern businesses are adopting modern operational solutions. In fact, many businesses have their workers or teams located in different regions, with some working remotely, either at home or in an open or non-office setting.

To ensure all the business processes run smoothly and that everything aligns according to business requirements, it is key for all teams to access business applications and relevant data, despite their location.

Cloud computing services make all these possible, contrary to on-premises architecture.

• Cost-effectiveness

With cloud computing, it is easy to save costs significantly. For instance, the cloud’s scalability and flexibility nature allows you to scale the resources either up or down, giving you room to save more.

Again, with cloud infrastructure, you don’t incur some expenses such as electricity upkeep. And hardware costs, thus saving more.

Above all, cloud service providers have subscriptions or plans for pricing, which helps businesses manage expenses while scaling business operations promptly.

• Enhanced performance and agility

Cloud migration from on-premises infrastructure enhances overall agility and performance. By offering a platform for easy access to resources, the teams can easily update and make required changes in an app in a timely manner.

What’s more, cloud infrastructure offers flexible options for deployment processes, which simplifies the company’s operations.

• Innovation & competitiveness

On-premises-to-cloud migration positions your business to embrace advanced technology and innovative ideas.

With cloud infrastructure, you can easily access machine learning and AI technologies, which are significant in introducing new features and practices that will put your business ahead of the market competition.

• Improved security & compliance

Security and compliance are some of the core elements in a business environment. Cloud service providers have in place solid measures to protect and safeguard the data in the cloud. The best part is that cloud solutions don’t need extreme costs or expenses to safeguard your data. The powerful analytics tools in the cloud infrastructure offer guidelines on potential risks and how to mitigate them in a timely manner.

• Improved disaster recovery & business continuity

In a business setting, disaster recovery is a vital aspect. When unpredictable interruptions happen, many business activities will be affected, hence affecting business continuity, and to some extent, loss of valuable resources.

However, cloud infrastructure has in place backup capability and inherent redundancy measures to ensure a streamlined disaster recovery process in case of any form of interruption.

This ensures business continuity even when the unexpected happens. The operations will remain stable, and all aspects of the business will remain responsive.

How to perform on-premises-to-cloud migration: step-by-step process

Having explored the different methods for cloud migration and the reasons why on-premises-to-cloud migration is a viable solution for your business, the main question is, how do you carry out the processes? What are the guidelines? Below are simplified steps you should follow during the on-premises-to-cloud migration process.

• Review the current data environment

Before anything else, you need to evaluate and understand your existing app and data environment. This will help you highlight and explore existing problems within your system. As a result, you will be able to create a streamlined migration process that meets all the requirements of your business.

To avoid performance and related issues later on, make sure you size your database adequately to keep adequate storage space after the migration process.

The step to successful cloud adoption is multifaceted, with several critical considerations:

Under this step of cloud migration, factor in the following elements:

• Define core business objectives and goals

You must first of all understand all the needs of your business to create a streamlined cloud migration process.

Some of the business objectives you might have include improving business agility, achieving improved scalability, uplifting the overall performance of the system, or reducing overall costs of operation. Whatever the case is, make sure you state all the goals you want to achieve clearly.

• Review the existing on-premise assets

Next, you need to assess all the assets within your on-premises infrastructure. These include workloads, data, applications, and any other tech resources.

Once you have a better understanding of all these resources and assets, you can create a practical migration process while understanding how and which assets you need to migrate to the cloud in a defined sequence.

• Review the cloud computing models

Cloud computing isn’t limited to a specific approach. It has diverse deployment models, with each method having unique features, benefits, and pitfalls.

As you review the cloud computing models, make sure you factor in elements such as regulatory guidelines, performance requirements, security measures, and costs. This will help you settle with a flexible and viable cloud computing model tailored specifically to your business requirements.

• Define the timeline and costs

After performing a careful analysis of the existing data set-up (on-premises) infrastructure, you now have a better overview of the processes you need to carry out and in which ways.

Now, you need to approximate the costs and the timeline for accomplishing all the processes for easy planning.

With some advanced tools such as timeline creators, you can have a simplified overview of the entire migration process, thus enabling you to plan ahead.

Apart from the time investment factor, don’t forget to define both long-term and short-term financial aspects of the migration process.

Some of the core factors you need to consider under this step include the following:

• Budgeting for Success – in your budget, include expected and unpredicted expenses to stay on the safer side. Extra funds set aside for unforeseen events will help ensure migration continuity without affecting other operations of the business.
• Upfront costs – these are costs incurred when migrating data and apps to cloud infrastructure. These costs cover training programs for the team and any new software or hardware required during the migration process.
• Time Investment – set appropriate timelines based on the complexity of your on-premises infrastructure, team expertise, and volume of data for migration. When you factor in these elements, the timeline can be a few months, a year, or over a year.
• Ongoing expenses – these comprise extra costs for services or bandwidth as your business expands, more data storage expenses, and annual or monthly cloud service costs. While cloud infrastructure offers great flexibility, it comes at a cost, hence the need to plan early enough.

• Create a plan and track the progress

At this point, you have almost everything required for cloud migration in place. However, you need and practical and actionable plan to carry out the processes.

As you create a plan, start by preparing the process and testing the on-premise environments to the cloud. This step will help you in the following ways:

• Testing rigor – by migrating the environment first, you get a chance to test apps and data in a cloud state to ensure compatibility, hence avoiding performance issues when business operations are already on.
• Familiarization – this step helps your team understand and familiarize themselves with the cloud infrastructure, hence getting valuable insights on issues that can crop up in cloud services.

Note: as the migration process is on, monitor the progress while reviewing the financial element.

You can integrate project management tools to track the migration speed in relation to the planned timeframe. Source frequent updates from the migration team to identify any possible issues to resolve them in the early stages.

Keep all the expenditure costs for the whole migration process. Cloud costs vary, hence the need to track real-time expenses for adequate planning. Again, you can review the trends and adjust where necessary to avoid overspending.

• Manage your cloud resources

At this point, you have executed the on-premises-to-cloud migration process successfully. However, that is not all; you need to manage the apps and infrastructure in the cloud. The processes include performing the following tasks:

Cost control – track all the cloud expenses keenly. You can use cost management tools and cost management best practices to avoid spending beyond your budget limit. Keep adjusting resources to match the demand while striking a balance between operational and financial efficiency.

Performance & SLAs– introduce tools to track app performance in contrast to SLAs. Keep modifying app design or infrastructure for optimization purposes.

Routine Management – Track the system’s progress, do frequent backups, and apply patches to ensure you seal all the loopholes that can lead to some risks.

Note: proper cloud infrastructure management ensures seamless operation that matches the costs incurred. This ensures the app performs and helps a business attain the set objectives.

• Track and optimize performance

This is the final step when carrying out on-premises-to-cloud migration. It is all about monitoring the processes and performance within the app to identify any capacity issues, reviewing the database for slow queries, and identifying possible errors.

Under this step, carry out the following tasks:

• Capacity management – involves checking the infrastructure capacity more often to ensure the available capacity aligns with the demand.
• Tracking errors – involves monitoring the app to spot and resolve errors, if any, in a timely manner.
• Query performance – involves checking for slow queries and resolving them promptly to avoid performance issues.

Other tasks that enhance optimal cloud performance include the following:

• Cache effectively – involves using the cached cloud infrastructure data for easy retrieval processes.
• Leverage CDN (content delivery network) – involves integrating CDN to accelerate content delivery speed to users across the globe and to eliminate latency.
• Scale smartly – both horizontal and vertical scaling are effective here. It all depends on the need and state of the app.

Cloud infrastructure optimization practices play big roles in enhancing user experience while improving the overall performance of the app, ensuring all the processes are seamless.

Common challenges and solutions during on-premises-to-cloud migration

While on-premises-to-cloud migration is a seamless process with proper planning, there are some challenges that cannot go unnoticed. These challenges include the following:

• Managing costs

Cost management is one of the most challenging issues during cloud migration. The process can entail more hidden costs that can overrun your set budget limit. For instance, regular operational expenses and data transfer costs can exceed your anticipated limit. Again, managing costs, especially with lots of hidden expenses, can be challenging.

Solution: always analyze the TCO (total cost of ownership) total costs for every planned migration process. Above all, evaluate a detailed business analysis depending on your business dealings as well as determine if cloud migration is the ideal strategy for your business.

• Data Security & Compliance

Again, data privacy and security are major concerns when performing the on-premises-to-cloud migration process. Many business owners are often skeptical about moving sensitive business data from one platform to a completely new environment, especially when they factor in related regulatory risks.

Solution: always factor in compliance standards such as PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR when planning to perform the cloud migration process. Above all, perform a risk assessment before you execute the migration processes to identify any loopholes that are vulnerable, then solve them in a timely manner.

• Migration Complexity

The on-premises-to-cloud migration process is complex. The steps involved need proper analysis to ensure you succeed in the end.

Solution: Planning is key in streamlining all the migration processes. Above all, work with cloud solutions company like Aalpha Information Systems, who understand the ins and outs of the migration process to ensure a streamlined and smooth process that won’t affect business operations.

Quick tips for a successful on-premises-to-cloud migration

So, you are on the move to perform the on-premises-to-cloud migration process. Consider the following tips for a successful process in the end.

• Don’t forget to plan well

On-premises-to-cloud migration is a complex process that requires adequate planning. Therefore, evaluate all the current assets of your on-premise infrastructure, including data, apps, and dependencies. With this in mind, you will be able to highlight some possible issues likely to arise and create a practical plan for overcoming such issues.

• Have reliable communication channels

During cloud migration from on-premises infrastructure, there are several parties involved. Therefore, to ensure the process doesn’t affect other parties or teams, keep reliable communication channels. Let the users, migration teams, C-suite executives, and all other stakeholders be informed of the processes and progress of the cloud migration. Above all, keep a smooth environment where every member can share or raise any concerns to be addressed in a timely manner.

• Compliance and security are key!

Before you figure out anything, think of the security of your data or app. Since you are migrating your business dealings to a new environment, ensure you understand and comply with regulatory guidelines, put in place access controls, and emphasize data encryption techniques as away of safeguarding your confidential details.

• Train your migration team

Make sure your migration team gets adequate training on the cloud infrastructure to carry out the processes promptly. Guide them as they get to understand cloud infrastructure best practices, technologies, and cloud migration tools necessary to carry out the processes. Above all, give your teams all the necessary resources to actualize the process in a professional manner. Don’t forget to motivate your teams in different ways to create a comfortable working environment for all.

• Optimization is essential

Before you set up the cloud migration process, you need to ensure the process aligns with best practices, hence the need for optimization. While optimizing the process, consider performance optimization, fault tolerance, and scalability elements. Above all, maximize the use of cloud-native resources and services to improve the functionality of the app in the cloud.

• Track performance and expenses

After on-premises-to-cloud migration, you will need to evaluate performance and expenses to ensure the viability of the cloud solution.

You can integrate cloud monitoring tools for performance tracking, optimize resource utilization, and detect issues, if any. Do this regularly to spend within your budget.

• Integrate automation tools

Automation tools are faster and more accurate. For processes like task monitoring, testing, and deployment, you can use CI/CD pipelines and DevOps best practices to automate the tasks for a speedy and effective process.

• Perform continuous improvement

Once you finish the migration process, that is not all. This is a continuous process, hence the need to embrace a continuous improvement culture.

Encourage your migration teams to keep up with sharing hacks & tips, knowledge, continuous feedback, and innovative ideas that will streamline the app’s functionality in the cloud.

• Consider a phased migration strategy

On-premises-to-cloud migration process comes with a number of risks and interference with business operations.

To overcome this, you can consider the phased migration method whereby to begin with low-risk apps and data as you move towards those with higher risks.

This approach will enhance a seamless testing, optimization, and troubleshooting of issues.

• Perform rigorous testing

Finally, testing is crucial during and after on-premises-to-cloud migration. This enhances the overall functionality of the entire system while in the cloud. Among the testing to perform include security, load, and failover testing to establish the viability of your system in the cloud.

Conclusion

Cloud infrastructure offers a business the ultimate flexibility in its operations while staying ahead of the competition.

If you feel it’s high time you advanced your business by adopting cloud infrastructure, consider the guidelines shared in this blog for the effectiveness of the entire process. Should you feel stuck, contact our team of experts for a smooth on-premises-to-cloud migration.

Need help with On-Premises to Cloud Migration? Contact our cloud application development company, Aalpha Information Systems.