The Comprehensive Guide to Cloud Migration with Azure

The Great Migration in Africa

Planning a migration to the cloud can be daunting for any organisation. The upfront time investment required to plan infrastructure modernisation, data strategy and ideal cloud architecture can seem overwhelming. This leads many organisations to defer their cloud migration ambitions as they feel they cannot spare the capacity and budget. 

 

Fair. However, a Forrester study found that companies modernising their applications on the Azure Platform as a Service (PaaS) saw a 228% return on investment. It also found that while application development increased by 50%, infrastructure costs related to this application development went down by 40%, and that the estimated cost savings on infrastructure could be as much as $19.1 million over three years. 

 

Those are several very good reasons to consider prioritising a solid cloud migration strategy. And there are ways of bypassing a significant chunk of the challenges and complexities that could potentially impact this migration if you follow best practices and strategies designed to facilitate a smooth and efficient migration process. 

 

Best practice cloud migration in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 

 

05: Define your strategy with full business visibility 

 Moving to the cloud means moving towards a new way of doing business. You need to know what you want this migration to achieve. Is it improved efficiencies? Is it security? Innovation? All of the above? Understanding the precise motivation behind the move and defining your expected outcomes equates to selecting the right technology, approach and partner. 

 

04: Plan your route, be ready to adapt 

 You know your outcomes, now you need to determine the best way of achieving them. Consider working with a trusted service provider that has an established relationship with Microsoft and can help you plan each phase of your migration carefully. This will reduce disruption and give you the space you need to adapt your approaches if and when challenges arise.  

 

03: Prepare your environment 

 Lift and shift, one size fits all. Ditch the terminology that promises an easy fix. Your cloud migration will come with its own unique challenges and will need careful environment assessments to ensure that you have the tools you need to deal with these problems effectively. Prepare your environment for your cloud migration strategy in advance. 

 

02: Adopt the workloads, embed governance 

 In this phase, you’re moving your workloads into the cloud environment with careful attention to your objectives and minimising disruption. Use this as an opportunity to benchmark and implement governance best practices within your environments and workloads. Slow and steady may take time, but they will see your business win the race. 

 

01: Manage the win 

 Once you’ve transitioned your on-premises infrastructure to the cloud, you get to enjoy the enhanced flexibility, scalability and accessibility you anticipated. Mint has proven migration strategies that allow you to tick every one of these best practices boxes while adding in the extra benefits of future-proof application modernisation, exceptional data migration and management, and consistent support and cloud strategy consulting. 

 

Moving forward into the cloud can be a secure, intelligent and pain-free experience. Our long-standing relationship with Microsoft, our team of engineers, our hands-on consultants and our proven track record in providing companies with the cloud infrastructure they need make us the perfect partner for your cloud migration.