The decision to migrate to the cloud can be driven by a number of different factors. In the financial services industry, for example, cloud computing makes it possible for organisations to deliver better customer experiences, maintain the security and accessibility of highly-governed data, and even enable the broader transformation of the organisation and its products and services.
However, migrating your organisation’s IT environment to the cloud is a complex undertaking. To ensure a successful project outcome, it’s important to begin with a comprehensive analysis of your current situation, including understanding how your business will benefit from a cloud migration. Addressing additional considerations early on can set you up for long-term success by driving the creation of an easily managed, optimised cloud architecture.
Here are five important cloud migration considerations to evaluate before, during, and after your migration:
1. Assess your current state
To assess your current state, you’ll need to identify all of your business’s current applications and then evaluate their workloads. Later on, this will give you some insight into the most appropriate migration strategies for your unique ecosystem.
You can conduct this process manually, but at Codify, we use a proprietary cloud migration automation tool called CloudLift to provide a detailed, evidence-based assessment of your entire IT service stack. By reverse engineering your server infrastructure, CloudLift can define an accurate run-state estimate for transitioning all or part of your on-premises infrastructure to the cloud.
In addition, CloudLift carries out a source-code level assessment of your custom applications to determine their cloud-readiness. Once the current state of your environment is assessed, the information can be used to recommend the ideal set of Azure cloud services for your migration.
2. Determine a migration strategy for applications
As noted, once you know the current state of your environment, the next step for your financial services business is to define a clear application migration strategy. This step reduces risk by evaluating which applications are suitable for transferring to the cloud and which should be left in place or re-engineered for cloud suitability.
Further, some applications may need to be retired entirely if they’ll be made redundant by your new cloud architecture. Those that are suitable for the cloud need a migration path, which may include some combination of rehosting, re-platforming, re-architecting, or repurchasing.
3. Develop your reference architecture for Azure
In both the migration and run phase of your Azure migration journey, taking the time to establish a solid foundation will help you avoid future bill shock and leave you with an easy-to-maintain environment.
Developing a reference architecture using Azure Resource Manager enables you to maintain cost control through Resource Groups and Tags. This makes provisioning and cost management simpler both during the migration and into ongoing cloud management. Without a solid reference architecture, you’ll have to sift through thousands of resources to gain clarity into your environment. Naming conventions, Tags and Resource Groups help eliminate this extra effort.
When working with financial services businesses, Codify’s Azure Foundations project stage makes it possible to address these foundations of cost control before undertaking your cloud migration.
4. Connect to your Azure-based workloads via hybrid networking
Network topologies are constantly evolving in the cloud era. The challenges inherent in extending what you have on-premise today include shifting from a statically routed network to dynamically routing networks, ,as well as moving away from a hierarchical network that requires a default route to connect your various sites.
These challenges are complex and, without support from an experienced partner, you can easily succumb to the pitfalls. A Microsoft Gold Certified partner like Codify can help by designing a solution that enables you to connect to your Azure-based workloads via hybrid networking – making it as flexible as you need it to be.
5. Implement proper governance
With great cloud computing power comes great cloud computing responsibility. Proper governance and discipline when implementing rules, processes, and policies keep your system secure. Addressing governance can also help keep your costs under control – each time a resource is provisioned it costs money.
There are various tools available to help with cost management including Azure Cost Management, but they still require you to manually run governance on your systems.
Codify’s managed service, Managed Azure, offers AI-driven support that can identify potential enhancements and opportunities for cost savings, process improvements, and the deployment of new workloads.
What’s your reason for migrating to the cloud?
Every organisation has a different impetus for migrating to the cloud. Understanding the rationale behind your pending transition can inform your cloud migration approach and help you avoid the mistakes of others.
Opportunistic
Have an internal cloud enthusiast who always wants to jump on board the latest technology? In this case, your cloud migration project might be considered opportunistic. In this case, it’s important to ensure the necessary checks and balances are in place to determine which cloud solutions are actually appropriate for your organisation – opposed to those that sound newest and most exciting.
Organic
Maybe you’re implementing a new, specific solution which uses cloud technology. In this case, the organic adoption of the cloud technology will be led by the design of the solution – and then accelerated by its success.
Orchestrated
In an orchestrated path, adoption of the cloud is led by strategy, usually resulting from a significant event or internal decision. In this case, the directions and timeframe of the adoption process can be thoughtful designed and cleanly executed.
Cloud migration help when you need it
Whatever your reasons for deciding to move to the cloud, ensuring the project’s success comes down to effectively planning your approach. Codify break the cloud migration process down into three phases – Plan, Migrate and Run.
At Codify, our experienced cloud migration team can help you chart a clear and actionable plan to achieve project success. From our initial assessment and planning stage, through to your seamless migration and on to the professional management of your Azure environment, we can support your financial services business through all phases of its cloud migration project.
To take advantage of our deep experience in Azure cloud management and ensure the success of your project, connect with us today.