What is cloud migration?

Cloud migration is the process of moving an organization’s data, applications, and workloads from an on-premises infrastructure to a cloud environment. This can include moving to a public or private cloud, or moving workloads between cloud environments. Moving workloads from a public cloud back to private cloud or on-premises infrastructure is commonly known as cloud repatriation. Organizations often migrate to improve efficiency, control costs, modernize technology, and gain access to capabilities such as AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics.

How does cloud migration work?

Cloud migration requires careful technical planning aligned to business objectives. The process typically includes four stages:

1. Assess and plan: Build the business case, determine which applications and data should move, identify dependencies and requirements, and select the appropriate cloud environment and provider.
2. Design and test: Determine how applications and data will operate in the cloud, select services and features, establish networking, security, backup, performance, and cost requirements.
3. Migrate and validate: Build the target environment, provision resources, replicate data, configure applications, and test security, performance, and functionality.
4. Optimize and maintain: Monitor performance and costs, adjust resource usage, maintain applications, and take advantage of additional cloud capabilities over time.

Applications may also need to be modified to work effectively in a cloud environment. Common migration approaches include:

• Rehost: Move applications to the cloud with as few changes as possible, often called “lift and shift.”
• Replatform: Make targeted changes to improve performance or take advantage of new cloud capabilities.
• Refactor: Rework or rearchitect applications for the cloud while maintaining the core user experience.
• Rebuild: Rewrite an application when migrating the existing version would be less practical or efficient.
• Repurchase: Substitute an existing on-premises application with a cloud-based alternative rather than migrate it, also known as “drop and shop.”
• Retain: Keep an application where it is when migration doesn’t provide enough value.
• Retire: Decommission an outdated or unused application altogether.

Why is cloud migration important?

Cloud migrations give organizations an opportunity to move beyond the cost, performance, and scalability limitations of aging infrastructure. Legacy systems can become expensive to maintain, difficult to scale, and harder to secure. Cloud environments can also provide easier access to newer capabilities such as AI, machine learning, analytics, and modern development tools.

Benefits and use cases

Cloud migrations typically provide a variety of benefits: Scalability and flexibility: Moving to the cloud helps organizations adjust resources as demand changes, and deploy new applications and services faster.

• Cost efficiency: Reduce large upfront infrastructure investments and pay for resources based more closely on usage, reducing capital investment needed and paying only for capacity that is used.
• Innovation and agility: Access cloud-based tools and services that support faster development and adoption of new technologies.
• Security: Use cloud security capabilities while centralizing policies and controls under a shared responsibility model.
• Business continuity and resilience: Support backup, disaster recovery, and redundancy to reduce downtime and data loss during disruptions.
• Collaboration: Give distributed teams secure access to shared applications, data, and communications tools.
• Sustainability: Reduce reliance on organization’s own physical infrastructure and associated energy consumption.

Cloud migration is a part of many common use cases, such as hosting applications in the cloud for improved performance and scalability, business continuity, improved data access, and accelerated innovation.

Does NexusTek help with cloud migration?

Yes. NexusTek has nearly 30 years of experience delivering modern IT solutions, including cloud migration services with a variety of leading providers of public and private solutions. NexusTek ensures a smooth, seamless transition of your applications and data to the cloud, with a proven 100% success rate for migrations to the NexusTek Cloud. Our Custom Cloud solutions are designed to fit your organization’s needs with personalized support from engineers who understand your business.