How to Cope with Cloud Migration Challenges?

Choosing experienced specialists is key for successful cloud migration. Unlike less qualified teams that invent reasons for mid-migration failures, leading to extra expenses and delays, seasoned experts anticipate and handle complexities.

These include post-migration cost spikes, uncontrolled spending, sudden charges from production changes, and pitfalls of rapid, single-phase migration. The right experts turn challenges into smooth transitions, which ensures cost-effective and timely project completion.

Challenges in increased costs arise from opting for a rapid single-phase migration

Inexperienced IT managers often rush cloud migration, transferring the entire setup at once. That overlooks differences in cloud architecture, affecting storage and computing needs. Fast migration strains the IT team, and the lack of historical data adds challenges.

That can result in paying for unnecessary resources (over-provisioning) or not having enough (under-provisioning), leading to avoidable expenses and operational issues.

Achieve application modernization with less funding. Opt for incremental cloud migration for complex on-premises applications. Break projects into smaller chunks, needing fewer resources.

Each iteration at the technology stack level adds modernized code. Gradually reduce the percentage of legacy code until the system is fully modernized. The system stays fully operational throughout this process.

A thorough cloud migration strategy includes time-tested approaches. For instance, the API-first modernization approach. Experts migrate customizations separately from the core app to microservices. Another strategy is modernizing critical user journeys first. These approaches minimize risks and costs.

The challenge of uncontrolled cloud spending arises from inadequate access management

In smaller organizations (under 500 employees), in-house developers may have sysadmin-level privileges in on-premises scenarios. That is why they get extensive control of databases with the ability to even delete them. Financial implications usually stay confined to the existing on-premises infrastructure.

In cloud computing, control issues pose vaster challenges. Costs directly relate to usage. Developers with broad cloud privileges might accidentally activate costly features, causing uncontrolled spending.

Implement strict role-based access to mitigate risks. Only authorize specific personnel for data access to reduce unplanned expenses. Use systems to track data access, providing oversight for maintaining control over cloud spending and data security.

Making changes in production poses a challenge of unexpected costs

Organizations making live changes on-premises may incur immediate costs when moving to the cloud. That happens if they don’t adjust this practice.

An IT engineer could adjust auto-scaling settings for better responsiveness during peak traffic. If the threshold is wrong, the cloud system might rapidly deploy too many servers, leading to higher monthly costs. This unexpected expense strains the organization’s budget.

Developers with sysadmin-level access may unintentionally activate costly cloud features, causing unmonitored spending. Allowing unrestricted live changes by the IT department in the cloud can lead to operational challenges, including service disruptions from unresolved bugs.

A robust change management process is vital for cloud migration. That means carefully looking at and approving changes, especially in production.

Changes must be tested in development or staging first. For example, simulating peak traffic in staging can assess auto-scaling responses, uncovering issues before affecting production.

The challenge of unexpectedly high costs after migration

After cloud migration, the budget for the new process can rise if you don’t think through the budget in advance and don’t use cloud-specific approaches.

Employ smart budget planning to manage and predict these costs. For example, you can utilize tools like the Azure Pricing Calculator and AWS Pricing Calculator. Consider key cost factors like resource types, size, features, services, scalability, backup, and recovery options. With this approach, you can effectively foresee and manage your cloud costs.

Set up cloud-native cost control methods, such as the auto de-provisioning feature, which shuts off resources when they’re no longer necessary, and elastic pools – a collection of resources like CPU, memory, and storage that adjusts automatically based on actual demand.

These methods help make sure you don’t end up paying more than necessary. Although cloud providers provide these tools, achieving effective cost management necessitates the expertise of specialized third-party or in-house professionals. They can help you choose the right resources, integrate with your existing systems, and continually improve to make cost control even better.

What do you need to succeed in overcoming cloud migration challenges?

Here are some core responsibilities of cloud migration experts crucial to project success:

• Assess the current data estate, infrastructure, and applications to be migrated. Develop a migration plan in response.
• Compare pilot requirements to technical implementation options. Recommend a migration strategy to the team.
• Deploy the production app with adjustments made in earlier migration stages.
• Perform a post-migration analysis with a focus on future enhancements, like improving recoverability at a lower cost.