6 steps to migrate your Microsoft workloads to the cloud
8 MINS READ
Highlights
- Migrating workloads to the cloud allows easier integration with other cloud-native services, helping organizations to offer more to customers.
- Cloud-native options such as AWS cloud-native management tools help capitalize on the scale, flexibility, and resilience of cloud applications.
- We recommend a 6-step approach to accelerate the migration of your Microsoft workloads to cloud.
in this article
Why migration
Secure your Microsoft workloads on cloud before it is too late.
Organizations hosting their business-critical IT systems on Microsoft environments, such as SQL Server, Windows Server, .NET, SharePoint, and Exchange, require high levels of availability and security to protect and store their sensitive data.
Since these workloads form a core layer of the IT infrastructure, migrating workloads to the cloud before legacy environments outlive their usefulness is a prudent step.
Migrating workloads to the cloud allows easier integration with other cloud-native services and helps organizations deliver new applications rapidly, which results in better customer experiences.
In the past, the cost of procuring and maintaining infrastructure to run Microsoft workloads was an operational necessity. Hyperscalers such as AWS now offer a broad set of global compute, database, application, and deployment services that use Microsoft technologies; they have also designed a lot of native components to work with Microsoft technologies.
Benefits of migration
Open windows of opportunity by leveraging the power of hyperscalers.
Here’s what you stand to gain:
Accelerated migration and deployment – Migrating existing Microsoft workloads to the cloud can be tricky. However, platforms and accelerators can allow for a rapid, accurate, and secure migration.
Scalability and flexibility – A pay-as-you-go pricing model helps reduce fixed costs. It also offers an option to scale up and down based on usage.
Improved security posture – Data associated with Microsoft applications is natively protected with end-to-end encryption. Flexible connectivity options of point-to-point or virtual private cloud add multiple layers of security, including dedicated physical connectivity, logical isolation, security groups, and access control lists.
“Technical debt” reduction – Migrating Microsoft workloads to the cloud helps future-proof the organization as it frees them from legacy technologies that have a limited shelf life and are difficult to maintain.
Continuous optimization – Ongoing performance improvement of Microsoft applications becomes simpler once they have been migrated to the cloud.
Tackling migration
Mantra for Microsoft workload migration success
So how do get you started? Here are six steps we recommend:
1) Analyze the details of existing Microsoft workloads running in your environment and build an informed business case about which workloads should be migrated.
2) Define and execute the migration of workloads. Platforms such as TCS’ Cloud Migration Factory enable faster migration with an assembly-line approach.
3) Operate and govern the workloads by addressing operational aspects such as monitoring, incident, change, release, configuration, problem management, and cost management. Platforms such as TCS’ Cloud Exponence can help manage such environments across geographies in either shared or dedicated service models.
4) Leverage cloud-native options such as AWS cloud-native management tools to capitalize on the scale, flexibility, and resilience of applications running on cloud. For instance, Amazon EC2 Run helps automate administrative tasks across a large fleet of instances. Likewise, the AWS RDS SQL server can help reduce overhead cost for managing Microsoft applications.
5) Deploy required versions of Microsoft releases. A comprehensive set of options available with cloud providers like AWS enables quick provisioning and supports migration of workloads to all the supported releases.
6) Actively explore options like bring your own license (BYOL). With such options, organizations can efficiently make use of their existing Microsoft licenses or purchase new Microsoft software licenses including Windows Server and SQL Server directly through cloud providers like AWS.
Conclusion
Organizations looking to migrate their Microsoft workloads to the cloud should consider these six key recommendations to ensure a seamless migration.
While cost is a key consideration, data security, business agility, and IT simplification are important aspects as well. Organizations should also understand that successful technological change is possible only when the impact on people and processes are addressed appropriately.
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