This cloud migration roadmap provides a structured approach to migration, ensuring efficiency, scalability, and long-term success.
1. Set Overall Objectives and Prioritize
- Base your priorities on business benefits that provide a competitive edge and greater profitability.
- Your plan should span multiple years of innovation adoption, with continual improvement as your migration matures and expands across more areas of work.
2. Create a Timeline
- Identify major milestones, such as retiring old technology or deploying new releases.
- Consider dependencies related to migration.
- Look for quick wins, like moving applications with fewer dependencies, to make the first steps faster and simpler.
3. Establish Cloud KPIs
- Existing KPIs might not be enough. Your KPIs should measure:
- Migration progress.
- Potential problems within your application.
- Completion and success of the migration.
- Improved contact center performance.
Include These KPI Categories
- User Experience: Response time.
- Application Performance: Availability and component performance.
- Infrastructure Performance.
- Business Management: Conversions and outcomes.
4. Build Skills Before You Start
- Identify teams needing training, from call center staff to security and IT.
- Focus on areas like data performance, usage, and stability.
- Ensure your vendor offers training courses or refers you to a training partner.
5. Develop a Strategy for Migration Testing
- Stress test and optimize workloads to check:
- Performance and failure conditions.
- Integration with other systems.
- Redundant systems.
- Conduct tests before and after moving to the cloud.
6. Discover and Assess On-Premise Applications
- Inventory all on-premises servers and assess dependencies.
- Use vendors with inventory mechanisms to:
- Understand VM and application dependencies.
- Estimate costs and readiness.
- Recommend sizing for migration.
7. Prioritize Migration Components
- Create a list of applications, services, and server infrastructures for migration.
- Use tools to generate a dependency diagram to determine migration order.
- Start with services that have fewer dependencies, typically internal services before customer-facing ones.
8. Perform Any Necessary Refactoring
- Refactor applications and services for better efficiency in the cloud.
- This can lead to:
- Cost savings from better resource utilization.
- Easier migration of individual services.
- Identify applications that can be retired during this process.
9. Pilot Your Migration With a Few Workloads
- Start with less complex workloads to:
- Show initial success.
- Learn from less-impactful mistakes.
- Use your cloud platform’s native toolset to minimize tools required.
- Run a test migration without impacting on-premises machines.
- Migrate groups of virtual or physical servers at scale.
10. Understand the Shared Responsibility Model for Cloud
- Train teams on the shared responsibility model, focusing on:
- Security.
- Data performance.
- Usage and stability.
- Ensure your vendor provides or recommends training resources.
11. Replicate the Process for Additional Workloads
- After your first successful migration:
- Document lessons learned.
- Define criteria for future migrations, including timelines and deployment options.
- Share plans with stakeholders to ensure alignment.
