AWS Cloud Migration Best Practices for your Project Plan

AWS Cloud Migration Best Practices for your Project Plan

March 21

Since every organization is different, each organization’s migration to the public cloud warrants a custom approach. This allows for minimized costs and disruptions to existing operations while maximizing uptime and the transformative capabilities of the cloud. 

Below, we’ll discuss the steps to create a successful AWS cloud transformation before, during, and after your migration: 

Before Your Migration 

Prior to your migration, there are a number of steps you’ll want to take to ensure your transformation is as smooth as possible. 

Analyze

Understanding your organization, business drivers, and application portfolio are essential for building a business case to move to AWS. 

Areas you want to analyze may include: 

  • Operational costs. 
  • Workforce productivity. 
  • Business agility. 

By knowing how these factors play a role in your cloud migration, you can include them in your project plan to account for them ahead of time. 

Augment

By working with a trusted partner, many can help fill in internal knowledge gaps and provide sound advice when designing and deploying applications that will thrive on AWS. 

In addition, we’ve found that often many organizations benefit from having an internal team lead the AWS migration. Often, this is a small team with knowledge about the transformation. 

This can allow your other employees to have a designated person to talk to for issues and questions. They can also give other employees confidence in the migration as they will be able to provide information about the process. 

Align

Developing a critical mass of people who share the desire to evolve on AWS and building a culture of innovation and over-communication ensures a strong use of AWS and smoother transition. 

This transition can be made smoother by having all of your employees on the same page, particularly in regards to budgets, timelines, and other relevant processes. 

The 5 Rs of Application Design

Once your needs have been assessed, it’s important to create a migration strategy for each application. When it comes to application design, there are typically five ways to change the application: 

  • Rehost. If the application allows for this approach, it is the simplest way to migrate applications. 
  • Replatform. This transportation approach is ideal for automation, cost savings, and getting off expensive software licenses.
  • Repurchase. This approach takes a look into the ability to move to SaaS or change from one SaaS to another. 
  • Refactor/Rearchitect. Often, this approach is most effective for monolithic applications to be modernized to boost agility and improve business continuity. 
  • Retain. In some situations, it’s best to leave applications the way they are. If the application’s needs change in the future, there’s always the ability to reconsider. 

While designing your project plan, your organizational and application needs will determine which of these is the most effective migration plan. 

Implementing and Optimizing Your AWS Migration

In order to successfully implement and optimize your applications, these steps are necessary for your project plan. 

Migrate

First, is the actual migration. There are a number of tools available to assist in your organization’s migration to the AWS cloud, including: 

  • AWS Direct Connect. 
  • AWS Kinesis Firehose.
  • AWS Snowball.
  • AWS Snowmobile. 

Each of these tools has the ability to make seamless transitions for both one-time migrations and ongoing transfers of data for hybrid environments. 

Monitor 

Next, once your migration is complete, it’s important to continuously monitor your environment for optimization opportunities. Areas examined often include: 

  • Operational Excellence. 
  • Security.
  • Reliability.
  • Performance Efficiency.
  • Cost Optimization.

By monitoring your environment, you can ensure that your organization is getting the most out of the migration to the AWS cloud. 

Motivate

Another aspect of your migration is ensuring that everyone in your organization is well-versed in the AWS platform. You want this migration to benefit everyone, so it’s often important to pair it with training and AWS certifications. 

Migrate Your Organization to the Future

As discussed in the ARM Strategy for Optimized AWS Migration whitepaper, an AWS migration is an opportunity for renewal. 

This transformation allows your organization to examine current applications, move them to a more efficient environment, and then optimize your workloads to ensure everyone in your organization is seeing the benefits of this move. 

Download the AWS Migration whitepaper to see how you can help migrate your organization!

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