Companies are wanting to find a way to leverage the capabilities within the public cloud with AWS. The challenge is taking that first step with the first workload. Cloudamize and Cloudreach have simplified the cloud adoption process with Zero-to-Cloud in 50 days.
In this post, I will provide the key pillars to cloud acceleration, and the process of application identification and planning for the first workload to migrate to AWS. In addition, I will discuss the importance of planning and stakeholder involvement to determine the full migration scope after a successful workload migration to AWS.
I am Dwayne Natwick, Sr. Product Manager for Migration and Security services lines at Cloudreach, an Atos company. I have 30+ years of experience in IT as an architect, project manager, product owner, and trainer. Cloudreach is an AWS Premier Partner of the Year with 700+ certifications and 10 competencies/ specializations.
Solution Overview
Zero-to-Cloud in 50 days includes the following workflows that I will discuss in this post:
- Cloudamize Assessment
- Migration plan
- Migration accelerator
- Next Steps: SMART Migration
Before going deeper into each of the workflows involved in a Zero-to-Cloud in 50 days migration, let’s go through the key elements of each workflow. Each element of the workflow is two weeks from initiation to delivery to maximize effectiveness while minimizing the level of effort. The diagram below outlines this process.
Each of these gated deliverables align the migration planning and execution to the pillars of the AWS Well-architected framework.
Let’s go through the components of each of these workflow elements and the benefits to your cloud transformation.
Cloudamize Assessment
The journey from Zero-to-Cloud starts with the Cloudamize assessment. Cloudamize is an assessment tool available on AWS marketplace that is installed to identify the current applications and licences that are within the IT infrastructure. This tool is gathering only high-level information about CPU, RAM, running processes, and operating systems. Cloudamize does NOT gather any personal data, or any specific data files from devices or databases. Through the two week assessment, Cloudamize and Cloudreach obtain information about hardware requirements, installed applications, processes, and application dependencies.
This information is then used for TCO, Rightsizing configurations, What-if Scenario planning, and driving customer discussions for the next step in the process: migration planning.
Migration Plan
Once the assessment phase is complete, Cloudreach Cloud Architects or Advisors will engage with the customer to begin determining a migration plan. The assessment and plan are tied closely together as the information from the assessment only tells part of the story. Planning for the migration needs to include customer interviews that assist with application selection for the initial lighthouse migration. Cloudreach will also review the Cloudamize data for areas to optimize cost, rightsizing requirements and SQL Licence Optimisation within AWS.
Cloud Architects or Advisors will meet with key stakeholders to understand any security, risk, and compliance factors that should be considered within the high level architecture, and identify roles and responsibilities for the project. In addition, when moving to the AWS cloud, there will be some additional skills needed from customer resources. Cloudreach will provide high-level guidance on planning and development of a Cloud Center of Excellence.
The primary deliverables coming out of this two-week phase will be the migration plan and a high level design for the new AWS architecture. This high level design and migration plan are key to the next step in the process: migration accelerator.
Migration Accelerator
After the migration plan is in place and the first application workload is selected for migration, Cloudreach will move to the process of migration. This includes the platform planning of what the operating model will be within AWS and how the customer will manage resources. The operating model should understand the current monitoring and management systems that are used by the customer today and how AWS APIs would be able integrate with these systems.
Next is to identify the network and security architecture and controls that are required to maintain connection to the hybrid infrastructure of the customer data center and AWS.
Once the operating model, network architecture, and security controls are identified, the cloud landing zone can be designed and deployed within AWS. The production landing zone is an important first step in the migration process.
The landing zone creates the foundational infrastructure within AWS for security, networking, policies, and governance of resources that are created within a customer’s tenant. Without having a production landing zone properly architected and deployed, additional risks and vulnerabilities could be introduced as new resources are deployed to AWS. Deployment of the landing zone represents the start of the migration process.
Once the landing zone deployment is complete, the lighthouse migration of the application can be completed. This migration will move the lighthouse application to AWS along with any dependencies for independent databases that are utilized by the application. If these databases have additional dependent applications that have not migrated, then an alternate plan for the application to connect to the databases in the current data center will be required.
After the application has been migrated to AWS compute resources, the application will be tested for availability and users will be redirected to the newly migrated application in AWS. A successful single application migration should take less than two weeks to complete, with the entire Zero-to-Cloud process taking approximately 50 days from start to finish.
You have completed a successful single application migration with Zero-to-Cloud in 50 days. This is the first step in your AWS migration journey. To fully utilize the benefits of the AWS cloud, you should plan and migrate more application workloads to AWS. SMART Migration can help accomplish this business objective.
Next steps: SMART Migration
SMART Migration is Cloudreach’s standardized approach to migrate applications and data to the cloud. This approach to migration is scalable to any size company and executes the data center migration at a consistent level of excellence and efficiency.
Cloudreach utilizes the information that has been collected through the Zero-to-Cloud planning and expands that through the entire application and data infrastructure. Additional Cloud Architect and Advisor involvement creates a more detailed level of application portfolio planning with a migration plan designed in waves to limit disruption and efficiently move applications to AWS.
The SMART Migration creates runbooks for each of the application and database migrations as these waves are based on data dependencies. In addition, applications and databases may be identified within the low level design to be refactored to benefit from AWS platform services that will maximize compute and operating system licensing.
Customer Success Story – Food Services company
Cloudreach serves up an end-to-end AWS cloud migration program to US-based food service company
The Challenge
When the food service company decided to move its on-premises environment to the cloud, it sought a partner to help it become familiar with cloud technologies, select a cloud service provider, perform the full migration and manage the new cloud infrastructure.
The Solution
The US-based food products company wanted to see a change – fast – and Cloudreach delivered. With our Zero to Cloud in 50 Days program, Cloudreach delivered:
- Scoped the migration and conducted a TCO analysis with Cloudamize, our high precision analytics platform.
- Automated provisioning by using an infrastructure-as-code approach.
- Used our onRamp™ for AWS approach for fast-track cloud adoption, including a lighthouse migration to quickly prove out the value of cloud.
- Deployed AWS technologies such as Amazon RDS to simplify the setup, operation and scaling of relational databases, and CloudEndure to automate application migration.
Cloudreach now manages this clients’ AWS Cloud with a full suite of infrastructure reliability services.
The Outcome
Here’s how the food service company is benefiting from migrating to AWS cloud:
- Long term costs savings, including the preclusion of CAPEX for equipment expenses and elimination of on-premises infrastructure management costs.
- IT staff is freed up to focus on innovation.
- Greater control and visibility of infrastructure performance.
- Improved security, stability and reliability of its technology foundation.
- Ability to create new capabilities through the use of cloud-based features
Summary
Zero-to-Cloud in 50 days provides a company with a structured plan to begin their journey to AWS. Through the prescriptive approach, company’s can be provided guidance with choosing the best lighthouse migration and Cloudreach will migrate that application to AWS with efficiency and effectiveness. Zero-to-Cloud builds the landing zone and foundational architecture that leads the way to migration of more applications and databases to AWS.
