One of the essential constituents of a path towards digital transformation is moving to a cloud-based environment for business data, infrastructure, and applications. Cloud adoption brings in a multitude of benefits, when compared to siloed and on-prem platforms, with security, flexibility, and extensibility being the key drivers for the transition.
When compared to a “lift and shift” approach towards migration, which moves all the workloads to the cloud, modernization involves a hybrid approach that involves migration, restructuring existing workflows, optimizing their capabilities, and aligning them with current and projected needs for the future. This conflux termed “Migration and Modernization”, is the key factor for an organization to achieve the optimal digital maturity needed to stay ahead in the race.
At Quadrion, Cloud migration is not limited to moving your data and apps but is a comprehensive process that factors critical parameters of your business, be it operations, processes, and people. Our solutions give you a unique advantage to re-engineer areas of improvement and derive optimal benefits from the exercise.
The Cloud Migration process begins with a preliminary assessment of your existing technology landscape, identifying workloads for migration, and analyzing the areas of improvement and innovation in your existing operational processes and workflows. It defines the outcomes of the process and tracks them with the identified KPIs to realize the benefits of the activity.
The Assessment phase factors in the necessary dependencies for your applications, to ensure that all application components are marked for a seamless migration. This includes an analysis of the compatibility and scalability factors of the identified applications scheduled for migration to Azure.
This phase also identifies the appropriate target Azure architecture to make the transition, along with an analysis of workloads to determine which of them need a pre-migration enhancement, or a modernization post the migration process. Also factored in is the application downtime during the migration and the intended security aspects of the transition.
Tools used in this phase are the Azure Migrate, Cloud Economics, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculator, and Readiness Assessment through SMART—the Strategic Migration Assessment and Readiness Tool.
The Migration and Modernization strategy determines the choice of a deployment model and the order of migration, post the assessment phase. It also involves a choice from the 5 Rs of migration, for each of the applications in the existing technology stack.
The Migration and Modernization strategy also determines the migration schedule, communication plans, risk mitigation approaches, roles, and responsibilities, as in with a RACI matrix. It lays the roadmap for the future stage of the activity.
The Implementation phase is the actual migratory stage, and primarily involves the creation of the below systems. Complex migration scenarios use a phased approach toward migration, and the use of test and development environments for the migration activity.
This phase is a post-migration activity and involves in-depth monitoring of the performance and functionalities of the migrated workloads, with Azure tools such as Azure Monitor, Azure Application Insights, Log Analytics, amongst others. It factors areas of optimization that reduce excessive usage of Azure resources to lower operational costs.
Quadrion, A Microsoft Gold Partner can give you the perfect Migration and Modernization strategy and implementation to meet your Azure goals.
Do contact us with your specific requirements, and we will be glad to charter a custom pathway for the Azure Cloud adoption.
