What is Migration to the Cloud?

Cloud migration offers cost savings, operational efficiency, and scalability by allowing organizations to pay for the services they use while relocating data, applications, and workloads to a cloud infrastructure.

What is Migration to the Cloud?

Typically, you only have to pay for the cloud services you use, helping to lower operating costs, run infrastructure more efficiently, and scale as business needs change. Cloud migration is the process of relocating an organization’s data, applications, and workloads to a cloud infrastructure. It could also mean moving a company’s data from one cloud to another.

Cloud migration takes place in six distinct steps. These are:

• Cloud assessment
• Proof of concept
• Data migration
• Application migration
• Leverage cloud
• Optimization

Cloud Models

Cloud computing models refer to the different ways in which organizations deliver and consume cloud services.

There are three types of cloud models:

• Public cloud
• Private cloud
• Hybrid cloud

Public cloud

Public cloud models refer to cloud computing services delivered over the internet and available to the general public. The use of public cloud models frees IT staff to focus on innovation and growth initiatives, increasing the return on investment from IT initiatives and potentially increasing profits and competitive advantage. They can either be free or offered to the public through paid subscriptions.

There are three main public cloud models, which we will cover later:

• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Software as a Service (SaaS)

Private cloud

Also known as corporate cloud. Unlike the public cloud, it serves a single company and doesn’t provide access for unauthorized users. The cloud space is custom-made to suit the company’s data and application storage needs. The advantage of using a private cloud is that the organization has full control over the space, how it is structured, and the scheduling of upgrades to reduce downtime while providing services.

Hybrid cloud

This model is a mixture of on-premises infrastructure, public cloud infrastructure, and private cloud infrastructure. Large companies typically use it for keeping important data private and for various support-oriented services in public.

Cloud Service Models

Software as a Service (SaaS)

SaaS, often known as cloud-based software, is a software distribution mechanism that allows users to access programs and services via the internet. This delivery strategy does not require local hardware or IT personnel, making it a cost-effective choice for organizations. Both consumer and enterprise apps can benefit from SaaS.

Salesforce, Dropbox, Slack, Google Docs, and Microsoft Office are some popular examples.

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

PaaS is a cloud computing service that provides an integrated application development and deployment platform. PaaS enables developers to concentrate on developing apps rather than worrying about the underlying infrastructure or other technical issues such as servers, storage, and networking.

Popular examples of PaaS providers include Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure, and Linux-based virtual machines.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a cloud computing architecture that allows users to access IT infrastructure, such as servers, storage, and networking, on-demand. This pay-as-you-go model helps organizations avoid the expense of purchasing essential gear while scaling their system swiftly.

Some popular IaaS providers include Rackspace, Digital Ocean, and Google Compute Engine, offering compute resources on the same infrastructure used by Google’s services. All three offer preconfigured images so users can have up and running quickly without needing too much technical knowledge.

On-premises

In some circles, implementing resources on-premises utilizing virtualization and resource management tools is referred to as the "private cloud." Although it does not offer many of the benefits of cloud computing, organizations often desire it for its capacity to provide dedicated resources. In most cases, this distribution paradigm is the same as legacy IT infrastructure while attempting to increase resource usage through application management and virtualization technologies.

Why Migrate to the Cloud? 

Migrating to the cloud is becoming more and more popular as businesses recognize the benefits of this approach.

Cost Reduction

Businesses that migrate from an on-premises solution to a cloud solution can drastically lower their IT costs by avoiding pricey hardware and software purchases, maintenance fees, and upgrade costs.

Scalability

Cloud computing enables firms to respond quickly and adjust their systems based on client needs without the need for additional infrastructure or staff. This flexibility allows organizations to introduce new products faster than ever before while avoiding upfront costs such as purchasing additional hardware or software licenses that would have been required otherwise.

Security

When it comes to security, cloud computing outperforms traditional on-premises options. Most providers have stronger identity management solutions that can help guard against potential cyber-attacks. Most on-premises systems may be unable to protect against such, owing to limited resources or old technology used locally.

Reliability

Cloud providers can deliver a better level of uptime since they have the resources and infrastructure required to manage their systems properly. Most suppliers have automated failover techniques that rapidly move services to another server if something goes wrong with one, resulting in minimal disruption to normal operations.

Fast Implementation

Setting up a cloud environment is much faster than local installations. This is because most providers provide access within minutes rather than days or weeks, and organizations can get their operations up and running swiftly and efficiently.