Azure Cloud Migration Services

Migration to the Cloud is today’s most happening trend in the IT industry, mostly due to rapid digital transformation.

The trend is finding its scope all across irrespective of the size of an organization. But the real question that continues to haunt many is, ‘which is the best cloud option?’

Here in this article, we will see Migration to Azure cloud!

Migrating to Microsoft’s Azure is the most-sought option for many firms facing challenges with the on-premises infrastructure.

Azure is preferred as one of the leading cloud platforms because of its services that include Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS).

However, migrating to Azure needs precise planning followed by a four-step approach.

Step-by-Step Azure Cloud Migration Strategy

The first and foremost thing for a successful Azure migration is developing your ‘Own Azure Migration Strategy’. Then comes the following:

Step 1: Assess

This step’s success is built on three aspects: Discovery, Mapping, and Evaluation of on-premise applications.

  • Discover: Use cloud migration assessment tools and compile the inventory of your existing physical and virtual servers in the existing environment, which should also include information and performance of your applications. The end of this step keeps you ready with information about servers and their metadata, thus helping you proceed with your cloud migration plan.
  • Map: Map your servers depending on their suitability to on-premises applications and group them accordingly to represent their relevant applications. This helps you get a complete idea of those applications and their dependencies on each other.
  • Evaluate: Now that you have grouped applications, it’s time to check what migration strategy suits them. This requires cloud migration assessment tools to learn Azure recommendations and migration strategies. Then evaluate the cost factor and choose the one that suits.

Step 2: Migrate

This step includes adopting four different sub-steps including Rehost, Refactor, Rearchitect, and Rebuild.

  • Rehost: Just move your applications to Azure as they are without needing any changes to the code. This is often termed as ‘lift-shift’ migration. But ensure the applications you move don’t require any additional code changes and directly go for orchestration only in the Azure platform.
  • Refactor: In this step, you make little changes to the application design, but not to the code. The application will later use IaaS and PaaS benefits offered by Azure.
  • Rearchitect: This step involves making changes to the application codebase to make it fit in the cloud, which can be modernizing, modifying or making it scalable and deployable by itself.
  • Rebuild: This step involves the complete rebuilding of an application using cloud-native applications, the service that Azure PaaS offers.

Step 3: Optimize

Safeguard your data and applications with Azure’s Secure, Data Protection and Monitoring options.

  • Secure: Get Azure Security Center for effective cloud security management and advanced threat protection for your cloud workloads. Azure security offers additional protection, giving you full visibility and control over cloud applications’ security and increased threat detection and recovery rates.
  • Protect Data: Backing up apps in Azure keeps your data away from potential security threats, avoiding additional costs and business disruptions while ensuring compliance.
  • Monitor Azure Monitor helps you easily monitor and track the health of your cloud data, apps and other infrastructure, alongside providing the right insights and analytics.

Azure has been increasing in popularity for its effective options in the right budgets. As the statistics show, Azure accounts for around 30 percent of the overall cloud market and 17% of the IaaS and PaaS market shares.