CloudMigration

Cloud migration refers to the process of moving digital assets such as applications, data, databases, workloads, and IT services from on-premises infrastructure or other hosting environments to cloud computing platforms. The goal is to achieve benefits such as scalability, cost efficiency, and improved resilience. Migration can involve moving to public cloud services, private cloud environments, or a hybrid and multi-cloud strategy that combines several providers.

Cloud services are commonly delivered as IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS. Organizations may adopt a single provider or a multi-cloud strategy. Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud arrangements connect on-premises resources with cloud resources and enable workload distribution across environments.

Migration strategies range from rehost (lift-and-shift) to replatform, refactor, repurchase, retire, or retain. Typical phases include discovery and assessment, planning and business case, application profiling, security and compliance assessment, migration execution, validation, optimization, and governance.

Key considerations include data security and privacy, regulatory compliance, data sovereignty, latency, interoperability, and integration with existing systems. Risks include downtime during cutover, data loss, vendor lock-in, skill gaps, and cost overruns. Effective governance, cost management, and a clear exit strategy are important.

Migration tools and services provided by cloud vendors and third parties support assessment, dependency mapping, and automated migration. Providers typically offer discovery tools, migration hubs, and migration factory services to orchestrate large-scale moves. Outcomes are improved scalability, faster deployment of new capabilities, and ongoing optimization by right-sizing and paying for what is used.