Organizations striving to adapt and modernize their current business applications often come to the realization that the most effective way to achieve their goals is to migrate to the cloud. This migration can improve flexibility, performance, agility, and cost savings by moving all workloads to the cloud – or at least a critical subset of them. However, many businesses struggle to develop the proper team, resources, tools, and processes to migrate rapidly and cost-efficiently. This is where managed services firms can provide significant benefits, as they can fill in any gaps necessary to facilitate a seamless AWS migration.

AWS migration

AWS Migration Planning Process

To prepare for an upcoming cloud migration, organizations must begin by understanding the standard AWS migration process. AWS separates the process into the following five phases:

  1. Migration Preparation & Business Planning – The Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) is a full lifecycle framework that allows cloud architects, IT professionals, and organizational decision-makers to reach their cloud adoption goals. It offers best practices, documentation, and resources that help companies to implement business and technology strategies for the cloud.  The CAF explores the process in 6 strategic areas: Business, People, Governance, Platform, Security, & Operations.
  2. Portfolio Discovery & Planning – Migration teams must select the right applications for migration, and this decision requires a strategic combination of data and expertise. In-depth information can help organizations to understand their current infrastructure and to identify which applications are important enough to include in the first wave of migration. This planning will allow businesses to select the right migration strategy and decide on procedure and timeline.
  3. Design the AWS Infrastructure – The design process is complicated but is achievable when deliberately thought out. How will the infrastructure work on AWS? Which instance types should be utilized, and in which configurations?  The goal of the design phase is to deliver a target reference architecture that all stakeholders sign off on.
  4. Migration & Validation Process – The next step in the process is mechanical: your staff must build the approved AWS architecture and migrate applications and data to the target architecture. This is another step where managed services firms can be invaluable.
  5. Operation & Optimization – The key to lasting success on the AWS platform is continuous optimization. During the Business Planning phase, the AWS migration team should have identified the critical personnel necessary to manage the AWS environment(s) on an ongoing basis. Round-the-clock monitoring can best often be achieved by working with strategic service partners.

Assessment and Evaluation

The AWS migration process is involved and often requires input from stakeholders from every organizational level. Therefore, it’s essential to invest the time upfront to gain buy-in and acknowledge that cloud migration is not just an IT project — it touches many different teams and divisions and necessitates close working collaboration between finance, compliance, product, systems, and other teams.

The team at Alliance IT has an in-depth understanding of cloud services and AWS – as well as how to facilitate resilience, security, efficiency, and economies of scale. If your company is ready to embark on the migration planning process, call Alliance IT today. Our team of cloud migration experts is here to assist your business through this migration, providing the support you require to prevent common mistakes. When it comes to AWS migration services, no other team of information technology specialists is as prepared to get you the results you need in the time frame you demand.

Let our team of AWS experts become a trusted extension of your team—bringing years of AWS experience to help you do what you do better, faster, and cheaper.