Cloud Migration Readiness Assessment
Cloud Readiness Assessment Overview
A cloud readiness assessment is a part of cloud migration planning that is critical to overall success. It confirms organisational readiness to proceed, the presence of sufficient internal skills, and ensures that a complete application inventory and dependencies have been fully documented. This cloud assessment and migration planning step is an essential part of your cloud migration planning and strategy by providing an inventory of applications to be moved and their cloud migration readiness.
What is Cloud Readiness Assessment?
There are two primary planning steps that are part of the cloud migration assessment program. One is having a checklist of items to ensure and document before the final step of planning your migration roadmap.
These are the milestones to be covered when planning your migration, and your cloud migration readiness assessment should look at each of these areas:
Determine your Cloud Mission and Goals
Having the end state in mind before you begin is an important part of evaluating success at the end of the cloud migration. It enables cloud migration testing and validation to be performed and evaluated based on the initial goals for the project. One of these goals should be the financial benefits of cloud migration, which can be measured later on.
Know What you Have
An application assessment for cloud migration is critical; in fact, the lack of an inventory that includes dependency mapping would be an indicator that the organisation is not yet ready for migration. Remember to include the following items and their dependencies to other applications like integrations and data dependencies:
- Applications
- Data and data dependencies
- Infrastructure footprint for migration planning
Determine the Migration Plan
Your cloud assessment and migration plan should address the migration method to be used for each application. Knowing which strategy: re-host, re-platform, re-factor, re-purchase, retire or retain and a cloud migration testing plan for each will help plan the cloud migration roadmap.
Review and Assess the Risks
Understanding and mitigating risks are part of every cloud migration assessment and a key indicator of readiness. Risks can be mitigated, and having a mitigation plan helps assure success or recovery from issues.
Ensure the Business is Ready
The final checkpoint is assuring the business is ready for the migration. Have they had the necessary training and communications needed to be able to access the application after migration? Do they have any upcoming deadlines that could affect the migration date? This is a critical step in your cloud migration assessment.
Cloud Migration Readiness – Our Features
One of the most important aspects of engaging a partner early in the planning and cloud migration assessment process is that partner’s ability to help with your application assessment for cloud migration. CG Technologies has the tools, templates, and expertise needed to help with cloud assessment and migration planning.
We can help with cloud migration cost estimation by delivering a needs assessment and quote for services. Our expertise in cloud migration and risk mitigation will help you assess security and migration risks, and you can leverage our expertise to discover mitigation strategies.
We have cloud migration assessment tools and templates to help plan your migration and are experts in cloud migration readiness assessments. We are there to help with all of your cloud migration and assessment planning needs through the delivery and launch of your cloud environment.
Cloud Migration Roadmap
Your cloud migration roadmap should start with a cloud migration assessment checklist that is used during each phase of migration. The migration will occur in phases, enabling you to prepare your plan and perform the assessment during each phase of migration. Each of the items in the graphic below forms your checklist: envision, plan, prepare, assess readiness, test, deploy, validate and launch, and will need to be achieved for each set of applications to be moved.
Start by envisioning the company’s cloud migration objectives, including tangible benefits and a cost-benefit analysis or business case. This should be performed for each application to be moved.
Next is to put together the migration plan for each application, including those that will be migrated together. The plan should include the priority of the application and the order in which they will be migrated.
Then prepare for that application’s migration by documenting and configuring the target system.
Next, assess readiness. Using this cloud migration assessment checklist, perform the application assessment for the first set of applications to be migrated. Address any areas that are not ready to move. Above all, be sure the business is ready to move.
Test the deployment plan by conducting a dress rehearsal. Determine the expected timings and whether enough downtime is planned to handle the data migration. This cloud migration testing phase of the project is critical to being ready to deploy as it is an indicator of the success of your cloud migration assessment program.
When everything is set, deploy the migration to the cloud environment!
After deployment, have key stakeholders validate the success of the deployment. Without end-user validation, it’s virtually impossible to know if the data and all areas where there are dependencies were properly migrated. This validation should include running any batch jobs or daily maintenance routines to ensure everything is working correctly.
Once the application is fully validated, the official launch of the new environment can take place. It will be important to have a backout plan in place in the event validation results were a false positive.
This methodology can be repeated through every phase of the project in cycles. This method enables an agile approach to the migration to the cloud, where each group of applications is managed like a development sprint. If any application fails its final application assessment for cloud migration, it can be moved into the next group or into a new group at the end of the project, depending on the reason for the failure and the technology of the next set of applications.
This is how cloud migration strategies can be combined with cloud migration assessment to ensure an appropriate project plan is in place. At the end of each of the phases shown above, it is critical to return to the goals set forth at the beginning of that phase and perform the measurements that will indicate the success of the program. This can be used in the cloud assessment and migration conversations with the business, demonstrating the successful result of planning, assessment, and deployment.