A cloud transformation is the process of moving a company’s information and operations from on-premises systems to the cloud. This includes several phases, starting with development of a cloud transition strategy; the migration and modernization of infrastructure, applications, websites, software, databases and data; and finally, cloud adoption within your organization.

Cloud transformation offers companies numerous benefits, from reduced costs to improved agility, efficiency and scalability. Migrating from on-premises data systems and legacy software to cloud-native solutions affords your organization the opportunity to automate more processes, lower data storage costs, rapidly update applications, and minimize downtime while also providing additional security and monitoring capabilities.

Cloud transformation and cloud migration both refer to transitioning your business from legacy systems to cloud-based solutions. While cloud migration is the process of moving data and workloads from on-premises systems or another cloud platform to a new cloud environment, cloud transformation is the broader process that includes both migration and the improvement of systems, known as modernization.

There are three basic phases of a cloud transition:

1. Assessment
2. Mobilization
3. Migration and Modernization

Assess

The first step of your cloud transformation is to determine your company’s goals and assess your readiness to transition to cloud computing. During this phase, you should perform in-depth cost projections for running applications on the cloud and lay out the business case for a cloud transformation.

Mobilize

This is the true preparation phase of cloud transformation. Once your organization has made the decision to transition to cloud services, it’s time to develop a migration plan. You’ll also want to ensure that you have the answers for any questions that remain following your initial readiness assessment.

Review the interdependencies between your systems and applications and then determine which migration strategy to use for each; will you relocate, rehost, replatform, refactor, repurchase, retire, or retain? 

As 2021’s AWS Migration Partner of the Year in France, Devoteam can help you create a roadmap for your migration and set your business up for a successful cloud transition.

Migrate and Modernize

Following the cloud transformation plan created during the previous step, you’ll now move on to the actual migration of your systems and applications and ensure their effective and sustainable adoption by your organization’s employees.

On the technical side, there are three stages of cloud transformation:

1. Application Transformation
2. Network Transformation
3. Security Transformation

1. Application Transformation

The first step of cloud migration is to move from using on-premises software and applications installed on individual computers and equipment to cloud–native applications. By making the change to cloud-based applications, businesses can drastically reduce costs for software licensing and dramatically improve scalability. Cloud applications also come with the added benefits of automatic software updates as well as readily available service and support. 

Internal corporate applications can be transitioned to the cloud in three ways:

• Lift & Shift: This is the quickest way to migrate a web-enabled application. You simply rehost the application in the cloud. No changes are made to the application’s architecture.
• Refactoring: You move some elements of the application to run on the cloud, reusing frameworks, code, and languages, but the rest of the application remains on legacy systems.
• Rebuilding: You completely rebuild the application from the ground up to be a cloud-native application.

2. Network Transformation

During this step of cloud transformation, you’ll move your organization’s legacy hub-and-spoke networks to the cloud. This transition to cloud computing enables employees, and connected equipment, to connect directly to cloud resources through the internet rather than relying on a local network and demanding large amounts of bandwidth.

3. Security Transformation

The third stage of cloud transformation addresses the security concerns of the
migration. Strategies for data encryption, backup, and recovery should be implemented and best practices for network and data security should be followed, such as setting up Zero-Trust networking.

You should also set up ongoing and continual monitoring of security risks and threats.

After completing these three stages of your cloud migration, you can then work to optimize your organization’s cloud environment and modernize your cloud applications. 

All that’s left is to provide your employees with the support and assistance they need while transitioning to these new systems. Your team’s skill set and mindset make all the difference between a successful, sustainable cloud transformation and one that fails. As a long-standing AWS Partner, Devoteam A Cloud can guide your organization to a seamless adoption of cloud-based services.