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Prepare for Success in Cloud Migration: Elevate Above Infrastructure and Silo Tools

Eric Kraieski

Achieving success with cloud adoption remains an elusive challenge for many organizations. But why is that the case? After all, there are countless tools designed to facilitate the process of taking on-premises operations to the cloud. It is common to use these purpose-built tools for moving virtual images, automatically provisioning services, migrating data, right sizing deployments and optimizing cloud operations. But when it comes to application migration, this variety of infrastructure tools actually contributes to the problem.

These disparate systems certainly work well enough for their specific use and purpose. However, successful execution of application rehosting requires that users look above these infrastructure tools to see the full picture and select the tools appropriate to the specific migration method, or "R approach" — rehost, replatform, repurchase, refactor, retire, retain — for the application.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about these point solutions is that they all focus on infrastructure migration tasks, while selecting the R approach and the specific sequence of steps required are entirely dependent on the application and business goals. How is it possible to decide which R method is optimal or appropriate if you never look into the application requirements? Before committing to a specific path for each application, it is essential to consider the business needs for its availability, access, performance and the total cost to achieve the migration.

Of course there will be times where a straight rehost (often called a "lift and shift") will be appropriate and optimal. This is especially true for mobile workloads that are self contained on a specific server with few external dependencies, no external storage and no requirement for real time app-to-app communications. In other cases, a rehost may be possible, but not desired. For example, rehosting may violate corporate information security policies such as HIPAA or GDPR. Or perhaps some refactoring or reconfiguration is required to achieve target availability goals. Organizations should assume no more than 10-20% of their total server inventory will be highly mobile and ready for an automated rehosting process.

In our experience, organizations that proceed with an "infrastructure first" approach quickly recognize that it does not take into account the impact on critical business applications early enough in the process. Unfortunately, this approach often results in wasted time as plans must shift once the business factors are acknowledged and considered. Taking an application-centric approach is the only way to orchestrate a successful cloud migration.

Know Your Environment Before You Commit to a Migration Approach

Cloud-native platforms typically provide much more agility and flexibility than lifted premise ones. Refactoring apps can be costly and time consuming, so some organizations prefer the lift-and-shift approach. But before you make the decision to take a lift-and-shift migration approach for an application, carefully consider your current environment, your business and IT goals, and expected cost and staff impact first. Simply shifting a legacy, premise-based app to the cloud with all its limitations instead of refactoring it may limit you from taking full advantage of all the benefits associated with the cloud.

Bottom line, tools to support general planning and to assess server mobility can provide useful data points, but are not sufficient for comprehensive planning. Developing appropriate migration plans requires a comprehensive understanding of the entire environment including appropriate information from siloed tools and application SMEs (subject matter experts). Applications should be identified and assessed for readiness: some will be able to be migrated immediately, while others will have to be rewritten or modernized to be workable in the cloud. The indispensable first step for any migration is having an actionable picture of the entire data center, which includes:

■ Accurate information about where apps reside, who owns them, and what SLAs, RTOs, RPOs apply.

■ Complete knowledge regarding the application dependency landscape. Don't just rely on autodiscovery. Your subject matter experts know the ins and outs of your business and will be able to tell you things that machines can't detect.

■ A normalized view of the landscape.

■ Visual dependency mapping of the entire landscape, including what applications are dependent upon, and what is dependent upon them.

■ An understanding of what applications should generally be "grouped together" for a cloud move.

■ The ability to distinguish superfluous data from information that matters. For example, the operating system, manufacturer/model, and IP address are commonly used data points in migration analysis and planning activities, while other information such as CPU speed, MAC address, BIOS, and OS Install Date are simply not necessary or beneficial to the migration activities. Tracking unnecessary data will distract the team and slow down discovery. Don't boil the ocean; just capture the data you need.

Mastering Orchestration

Application migrations are among the most complex projects an organization can undertake and require a cautious approach. If you take the simplest path, assuming that rehost is the preferred approach, then rapid early progress can be achieved by first focusing on the easiest mobile workloads. But once you complete the migration of the easiest workloads, the progress will come to a screeching halt. The majority of your app-to-cloud migrations will require deeper analysis, more careful planning and choreographed execution to assure success.

Orchestration of such an ambitious and sometimes treacherous initiative may seem to be an elusive goal. To avoid mishaps or stalled projects, here are several tips for orchestrating successful outcomes of your cloud migration initiatives:

1. Move up the stack, take an application-centric approach

2. Establish visibility across all silos and users

3. Don't boil the ocean – leverage a sprint-based, iterative approach

4. Leverage existing info and tools where available

With a disciplined approach, you can drive successful outcomes for your cloud adoption initiatives. You'll achieve greater agility and scalability in hosting solutions while avoiding any unplanned outages of your business applications and services.

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Prepare for Success in Cloud Migration: Elevate Above Infrastructure and Silo Tools

Eric Kraieski

Achieving success with cloud adoption remains an elusive challenge for many organizations. But why is that the case? After all, there are countless tools designed to facilitate the process of taking on-premises operations to the cloud. It is common to use these purpose-built tools for moving virtual images, automatically provisioning services, migrating data, right sizing deployments and optimizing cloud operations. But when it comes to application migration, this variety of infrastructure tools actually contributes to the problem.

These disparate systems certainly work well enough for their specific use and purpose. However, successful execution of application rehosting requires that users look above these infrastructure tools to see the full picture and select the tools appropriate to the specific migration method, or "R approach" — rehost, replatform, repurchase, refactor, retire, retain — for the application.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about these point solutions is that they all focus on infrastructure migration tasks, while selecting the R approach and the specific sequence of steps required are entirely dependent on the application and business goals. How is it possible to decide which R method is optimal or appropriate if you never look into the application requirements? Before committing to a specific path for each application, it is essential to consider the business needs for its availability, access, performance and the total cost to achieve the migration.

Of course there will be times where a straight rehost (often called a "lift and shift") will be appropriate and optimal. This is especially true for mobile workloads that are self contained on a specific server with few external dependencies, no external storage and no requirement for real time app-to-app communications. In other cases, a rehost may be possible, but not desired. For example, rehosting may violate corporate information security policies such as HIPAA or GDPR. Or perhaps some refactoring or reconfiguration is required to achieve target availability goals. Organizations should assume no more than 10-20% of their total server inventory will be highly mobile and ready for an automated rehosting process.

In our experience, organizations that proceed with an "infrastructure first" approach quickly recognize that it does not take into account the impact on critical business applications early enough in the process. Unfortunately, this approach often results in wasted time as plans must shift once the business factors are acknowledged and considered. Taking an application-centric approach is the only way to orchestrate a successful cloud migration.

Know Your Environment Before You Commit to a Migration Approach

Cloud-native platforms typically provide much more agility and flexibility than lifted premise ones. Refactoring apps can be costly and time consuming, so some organizations prefer the lift-and-shift approach. But before you make the decision to take a lift-and-shift migration approach for an application, carefully consider your current environment, your business and IT goals, and expected cost and staff impact first. Simply shifting a legacy, premise-based app to the cloud with all its limitations instead of refactoring it may limit you from taking full advantage of all the benefits associated with the cloud.

Bottom line, tools to support general planning and to assess server mobility can provide useful data points, but are not sufficient for comprehensive planning. Developing appropriate migration plans requires a comprehensive understanding of the entire environment including appropriate information from siloed tools and application SMEs (subject matter experts). Applications should be identified and assessed for readiness: some will be able to be migrated immediately, while others will have to be rewritten or modernized to be workable in the cloud. The indispensable first step for any migration is having an actionable picture of the entire data center, which includes:

■ Accurate information about where apps reside, who owns them, and what SLAs, RTOs, RPOs apply.

■ Complete knowledge regarding the application dependency landscape. Don't just rely on autodiscovery. Your subject matter experts know the ins and outs of your business and will be able to tell you things that machines can't detect.

■ A normalized view of the landscape.

■ Visual dependency mapping of the entire landscape, including what applications are dependent upon, and what is dependent upon them.

■ An understanding of what applications should generally be "grouped together" for a cloud move.

■ The ability to distinguish superfluous data from information that matters. For example, the operating system, manufacturer/model, and IP address are commonly used data points in migration analysis and planning activities, while other information such as CPU speed, MAC address, BIOS, and OS Install Date are simply not necessary or beneficial to the migration activities. Tracking unnecessary data will distract the team and slow down discovery. Don't boil the ocean; just capture the data you need.

Mastering Orchestration

Application migrations are among the most complex projects an organization can undertake and require a cautious approach. If you take the simplest path, assuming that rehost is the preferred approach, then rapid early progress can be achieved by first focusing on the easiest mobile workloads. But once you complete the migration of the easiest workloads, the progress will come to a screeching halt. The majority of your app-to-cloud migrations will require deeper analysis, more careful planning and choreographed execution to assure success.

Orchestration of such an ambitious and sometimes treacherous initiative may seem to be an elusive goal. To avoid mishaps or stalled projects, here are several tips for orchestrating successful outcomes of your cloud migration initiatives:

1. Move up the stack, take an application-centric approach

2. Establish visibility across all silos and users

3. Don't boil the ocean – leverage a sprint-based, iterative approach

4. Leverage existing info and tools where available

With a disciplined approach, you can drive successful outcomes for your cloud adoption initiatives. You'll achieve greater agility and scalability in hosting solutions while avoiding any unplanned outages of your business applications and services.

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...