The 6 R’s Of Cloud Migration

Nowadays, a lot of companies are investing towards the migration of their on-premises applications towards the cloud.

In this article, we will learn about the 6 R that will guide your cloud migration journey.

The 6 R ‘s Of Cloud Migration are set of strategy for migrate thing into the cloud , by understand the pro and con of each you ‘ll be able to plan on what r is appropriate for your application .

Re – host

Also know aslift and shift.
Migrate your application as is.This is the easiest path to get your on-premises application migrated to the cloud.Using this strategy, you copy your application infrastructure to your cloud provider.

You is use can use tool such as AWS Cloud Endure and VM Import / Export to automate this strategy .

Pros

• Reduced management overhead as your cloud provider will managed the physical infrastructure on where your application be hosted also known as infrastructure as a service (IAAS).
• Easier to optimize, when your application is deployed in your cloud provider it can now easily transformed to fully adopt the benefits of the cloud.
• Still offers cost savings as your physical infrastructure is managed.

Cons

• Not take the full advantage of the cloud .
• It is delay can delay thing that you could do well .

When to choose this strategy?

This is fits fit well if you want to migrate your application without the need of code orinfrastructure change , just implement the same thing you did on – premise and if you ‘re new in the cloud and want try thing out .

Re – platform

Also know aslift, tinker, and shift.
Has similarities with Re-hosting but it gradually take the advantage of the cloud offerings without having to change the core infrastructure of your application.

Take this strategy as a safe point for your application.It’s moving your database from infrastructure as a service to a Database as a Service.

Pros

• reduce management overhead – well than rehoste .
• Increased resiliency.
• Reduced cost.

Cons

• No real negatives as you only allow your cloud service provider to manage more parts of your infrastructure.

Examples

When to choose this strategy?

This suits your application migration if you want to gradually adapt on cloud functionalities such as auto-scaling, managed services, etc.without committing to a large migration effort, and by doing these you can achieve benefits than rehosting can offer.

Re-factor orRe-architect

review the architecture of an application and adopt to acloud-native architectures and products, such as:

• Service Oriented orMicroservices
• Serverless Architecture
• Event-Driven Architecture

This strategy is offers the best long term benefits but comes with stiff price and time consuming process.

Pros

• take the full advantage of using the cloud .
• Produce a much more scalable, better high availability and fault tolerant infrastructure
• Cost is aligned according the usage.pay as you use model.

Cons

• Initially, it is expensive and time-consuming.

When to choose this strategy?

This strategy is for those who really knows what are the full advantages of using cloud and make the most out of it.This will require you to drastically modify your application core infrastructure to be suited base on the cloud-native model, although this entails a lot of work this strategy will produce more value to your business in the long run.

Re-purchase

Move from managing installed applications on-premise and consume a Software as a Service (SaaS) model.Many of the common applications nowadays are available and offered as a SaaS.

Example

Move from a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to Salesforce.com, from Microsoft Exchange to Microsoft 365, an HR system to Workday, ora content management system (CMS) to Drupal.

When to choose this strategy?

This is for the applications that already exist with SaaS offerings that you can subscribe base on your needs.

Retire

In other wordIf you do n’t need the application , switch it off.Remove the applications that are no longer needed, applications that are no longer produce value to you oryour business.These applications are often running for no reason.

Pros

• Often provide 10 % – 20 % cost saving .

When to choose this strategy?

You’ll know, after your initial cloud migration assessment and base on the data you gathered, “Does this application benefit me?”

Retain

Also know asre – visit ordo nothing, for now.
Commonly, applications fall on this criteria are:

• old application is worth that has some usage but not worth the move .
• Complex application that need to leave till later.
• Super important application and it’s to risky.

When to choose this strategy?

This strategy is used when most of the applications were deployed and working properly in the cloud, you’ll look back and start to plan the migration for the application that falls in this category.

Using these 6 R’s you’ll be able to produce a table that contains your on-premises application together with the R that fits it.This detailed assessment per application will serve as your guidebook when it’s time to migrate to the cloud.

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