Our Head of Cloud, Paul Campbell, breaks down the typical cloud migration journey
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Cloud migration can be a daunting prospect. The complexity of moving everything from physical datacentres to the cloud is enough to fill anyone with dread but, with the right expertise, it doesn’t have to be this way.
At Daemon, we use a tried and tested four part process to make your cloud migration journey as smooth as possible. By planning carefully, testing thoroughly and keeping you in the loop at all times, we can provide maximum results with minimum disruption. Nobody understands this better than Paul Campbell, our Head of Cloud. We asked him to break down a typical migration.
1. Assessing your needs
There are many reasons a company might want to migrate to the cloud. Some are hoping to avoid expensive hardware renewals. Others want to improve flexibility, or pave the way for future growth. Some just want to keep up with the competition.
Understanding these motivations is the key to a successful migration. There is no one size fits all approach. The cloud can be whatever you want it to be, but you have to be clear about what that is.
Rushing to implement a cloud solution without understanding the customer’s needs is a recipe for disappointment. This is why the assessment phase is so important. We invest time to get under the skin of your business to answer the following questions:
- What are the business drivers of moving to the cloud?
- What outcomes are you hoping to achieve by moving to the cloud?
- Are there any specific problems you’re hoping to fix during the migration?
- Do you have a timeframe in mind?
This isn’t just a case of sitting down for a chat. We break the planning stage down into structured parts, each bringing us closer to your perfect cloud solution:
- Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA) -This is a thorough evaluation of your business and its systems, designed to pinpoint exactly where you are on your journey, this isn’t just technical, it's about your people too. We will look at the likely impact of cloud migration on everything from security to governance, and identify any weaknesses that need to be addressed.
- Rapid discovery- We gather as much data as possible about your current set-up, often using tools such as Cloudamize to automate this process. This allows us to identify your estate, understand what is running and provide analysis to support future costs and a plan for migration.
- Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). This is a detailed breakdown of costs, both for your current system and the proposed cloud solution. If you need to make a business case for cloud migration, you can compare these two sets of figures to fully understand the benefits of moving to the cloud.
- RAID (Risk, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies)- This is another way for us to spot weaknesses in your current system. We focus in particular on things that could slow down the migration, allowing us to plug these gaps before we start.
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2. Planning our strategy
Now that we know what you want, it’s time to start planning our strategy. Our aim is to deliver maximum value by tailoring the migration to your way of working. We don’t want to simply “lift and shift” your existing applications to the cloud. We want to modernise as we go, optimising your performance and unlocking extra benefits along the way.
We do this by sorting your applications into migration groups. These are applications with similar use profiles, or ones that are frequently used together. For each group, we decide on a migration approach. These are based on “The Seven Rs” (Retire, Retain, Relocate, Rehost, Repurchase, Replatform and Refactor). Some groups of applications will be kept in their current form, some will be combined or simplified, and some will be dropped altogether.
What are the seven Rs? Our principal cloud consultant Mohammed Munem explains.
3. Proving the pathway
We’ve got our strategy, but it’s not set in stone yet. We don’t want to migrate 50 or 60 applications only to discover a weakness in our plan. That’s why we always start with a pilot migration.
We select a small group of applications and run a short proof of concept. Our aim is to discover unforeseen obstacles. Whenever we find a problem, we update the migration strategy to address it. We call this “wading through the treacle”. We want to remove all sources of friction to make the final migration as smooth as possible.
4. Performing the migration
We’ve discussed your needs, planned our strategy and taken it for a test drive. Now it’s time for the moment of truth. This is where our preparation really pays off. With the major obstacles removed, it should be plain sailing all the way.
During the migration, we aim to balance speed with stability. We take an agile approach to ensure minimum disruption to your operations. We employ our cloud accelerators that allow Daemon to ultimately bring our industry learnings and streamline the migration process for our customers.
Our job doesn’t end here. Once the migration is complete, we'll be on hand to help for as long as you need us. We offer two levels of aftercare, so support is never hard to find:
- If you prefer a hands-off approach, we can provide a fully managed service. We’ll take over the day to day running of the cloud, handling everything from fixing bugs to installing updates. If you have a problem, just give us a call and we’ll get it sorted.
- If you’d rather take a more active role, we can provide collaborative support in the form of a Cloud Ops team. This is a dedicated group of engineers who will work alongside you, not only to maintain your cloud service, but to push it forward in innovative ways.
Start your journey today
This is only a rough outline. We haven’t touched on data security yet, but rest assured that it’s always a priority. We’ll be taking a closer look at this in an upcoming blog, so watch this space for more details.
The path to cloud adoption is never easy, but having the right guide can make a world of difference. To find out more, follow us on LinkedIn or send us a message via our website.