Cloud Migration: ​Strategy and Best Practices Part 1

​Migrating to the cloud can offer numerous benefits, including improved scalability, flexibility, and cost savings. However, the migration process can be complex and challenging, especially for organizations that are new to cloud computing. To ensure a successful migration, it's crucial to follow best practices and avoid common pitfalls.

Now, migrating at scale isn't just about the number of servers you're moving over. It also involves a whole host of complexities like people, processes, and technology. This is part one of a three-part series of articles that dive deeper into cloud migration strategy and best practice diving deeper into people, process and technology. In this article, we'll focus on the ‘people’ perspective of large cloud migration projects. By following these best practices, you can streamline the migration process, reduce risk, and maximize the benefits of cloud computing.

Strategy, Scope and Timeline

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The success of any migration program relies on three key elements: scope, strategy, and timeline. These elements need to be aligned and understood from the very beginning of your migration program to set the stage for a successful journey. Any changes to one element will affect the others, so realignment should be factored in for every change, no matter how basic or sensible the change might seem.

Strategy - Why do You Want to Migrate?

There are various reasons why you might be planning to migrate to AWS. Regardless of your reasons, it's essential to understand what your drivers are, communicate them, and prioritize them. Each additional driver adds time, costs, scope, and risks to your migration program. Once you define your migration strategy, alignment of requirements across various stakeholders and teams is crucial for success.

Different teams like Infrastructure, Security, Application, and Operations need to work towards a single goal and align their priorities with a single timeline of migrations. We recommend exploring how the desired business outcomes can be aligned across the various teams to minimize friction and ensure a smooth migration.

Scope - What are You Migrating?

It's not uncommon for the total scope of a migration program to be undefined, even when you're already halfway through the migration. Unknowns like shadow IT or production incidents can pop up unexpectedly, causing delays and shifts in your plans. To avoid this, it's recommended to invest time in defining the scope, working backwards from your target business outcome. Using discovery tooling to uncover assets is a best practice that can help you define the scope. Be flexible and have contingency plans in place to keep the program moving forward, as the scope will inevitably change with large migrations.

Timeline - When do You Need to Complete the Migration?

Your migration program's timeline should be based on your business case and what's possible to achieve in the allocated time. If your driver for migrating is based on a fixed date of completion, you must choose the strategy that meets that timeline requirement. For these time-sensitive types of migrations, it's recommended to follow the "Migrate first, then modernize" approach. This helps set expectations and encourages teams to align their individual project plans and budgets with the overall migration goal. It's important to address any disagreements as early as possible in the project, fail fast, and engage the right stakeholders to ensure that alignment is in place.

On the other hand, if your main goal of migration is to gain the benefits of application modernization, this must be called out early in the program. Many programs start with an initial goal based on a fixed deadline, and they don't plan for the requirements from stakeholders who want to resolve outstanding issues and problems. It's important to note that modernization activities during a migration can affect the functionality of business applications. Even a seemingly small upgrade like an operating system version change can have a significant impact on the program timelines. Therefore, it's crucial not to consider these upgrades trivial and to plan accordingly.

Best Practices for Large Migrations

Migrating to the cloud can be a daunting task, especially for large organizations. The success of a large migration project depends on several factors that need to be addressed from the very beginning of the project. In this section, we will discuss some best practices for large migrations that are based on data from other customers. These practices are divided into three categories:
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• People
• Technology
• Processes

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People Perspective

This section focuses on the following key areas of the people perspective:
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• Executive support: Identifying a single-threaded leader who’s empowered to make decisions
• Team collaboration and ownership: Collaborating among various teams
• Training: Proactively training teams on the various tooling

Executive support

Identify a Single-Threaded Leader

When it comes to large migrations, it's crucial to have the right people in place who can make informed decisions and ensure that the project stays on track. This involves identifying a single-threaded leader who is accountable for the project's success and empowered to make decisions. The leader should also help avoid silos and streamline work-streams by maintaining consistent priorities.

For instance, a global customer was able to scale from one server per week at the outset of the program to over 80 servers per week at the start of the second month. This was only possible due to the CIO's full support as a single-threaded leader. The CIO attended weekly migration cutover calls with the migration team to ensure real-time escalation and resolution of issues, which accelerated the migration velocity.

Align the Senior Leadership Team
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Achieving alignment between teams regarding the success criteria of the migration is crucial. Although a small, dedicated team can handle migration planning and implementation, defining the migration strategy and carrying out peripheral activities can pose challenges that may require involvement from different areas of the IT organization.

​These areas include business, applications, networking, security, infrastructure, and third-party vendors. In such cases, it is essential to have direct involvement from application owners and leadership, establish alignment, and establish a clear escalation path to the single-threaded leader.

Team Collaboration and Ownership

Create a Cross-Functional Cloud-Enablement Team

To successfully migrate to the cloud, it's crucial to have a team that is focused on enabling the organization to work efficiently in the cloud. We recommend creating a Cloud Enablement Engine (CEE), which is a cross-functional team responsible for ensuring the organization's readiness for migrating to AWS. The CEE should include representation from various departments, including infrastructure, applications, operations, and security, and be accountable for developing policies, defining and implementing tools and processes, and establishing the organization's cloud operations model.

As the cutover data approaches, it is a good idea to setup a war room, where stakeholders from different areas, such as infrastructure, security, applications, and business, can work together to resolve issues. This will enable the team to meet deadlines and successfully complete the migration.

Define Requirements for All Stakeholders

It's important to plan in advance for the involvement of teams and individuals who are not part of the core migration team. This involves identifying these groups and defining their role during the migration planning stages. Specifically, it's important to involve the application teams as they possess crucial knowledge of the applications, and their participation is needed to diagnose issues and sign off on the cutover.

This is where a RACI can be very useful. RACI is a popular project management and organizational tool used to clarify the roles and responsibilities of individuals or teams involved in a project or process. It helps ensure that everyone understands their assigned tasks and that accountability is clearly defined. The term "RACI" stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed, which are the four key roles involved in the process.

While the core team will lead the migration, the application teams will likely play a role in validating the migration plan and testing during cutover. Many organizations view cloud migration as an infrastructure project, but it's important to recognize that it's also an application migration. Failing to involve application teams can lead to issues during the migration process.

When selecting a migration strategy, it's recommended to consider the application team's required involvement. For instance, a rehost strategy may require less application-team involvement compared to a replatform or refactor strategy, which involve more changes to the application landscape. If application owner availability is limited, it may be preferable to use a rehost or replatform strategy rather than refactor, relocate, or repurchase strategies.
 
Validate that there are no Licensing issues when migrating workloads
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To avoid potential licensing issues when migrating workloads to the cloud, it is important to validate that the licenses will still be valid in the new environment. It is possible that licensing agreements may be focused on on-premises infrastructure, such as CPU or MAC address, or may not allow hosting in a public cloud environment. Renegotiating licensing agreements can be time-consuming and may delay the migration project.

​To prevent licensing issues, we suggest working with sourcing or vendor management teams as soon as the migration scope is defined. This can also impact the target architecture and migration strategy, so it is important to take licensing into account during the planning phase. 

Training

Train Teams on New Tooling and Processes

After defining the migration strategy, it's important to assess what training is required for both the migration and the target operating model. Using new tooling, such as AWS Database Migration Service, can cause delays during the migration, so it's recommended to provide hands-on training to teams. Automation is also key to accelerate large migrations.

Summary

Large-scale migration to the cloud requires a well-defined strategy, scope and timeline. This includes understanding the business drivers for the migration, identifying the workloads to be migrated, and developing a roadmap for the migration process.

In addition, successful cloud migration projects require a holistic approach that considers people, process, and technology. While it's important to have the right technology and processes in place, it's equally crucial to focus on the people involved in the migration. This includes identifying and engaging with stakeholders, establishing clear communication channels, and providing adequate training and support for employees.

In this article we have focused on the people perspective of cloud migration, which is a critical aspect of any successful migration project. We have discussed the importance of establishing a clear scope and strategy for the migration project, as well as setting realistic timelines to ensure a smooth transition.
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In future articles, we will delve deeper into these areas and provide insights and best practices for navigating the technical and procedural aspects of cloud migration.​​​