Why You Need a Cloud Readiness Assessment Before You Migrate
May 26, 2021
When it comes to IT, no one likes surprises. That’s especially true when undertaking a cloud migration. Misalignment of plans with business outcomes, higher cloud consumption costs, glitchy apps, and underperforming systems are some of the obstacles you could face with a poorly planned migration.
So, how can you migrate the IT infrastructure to the cloud correctly and securely? That's where a cloud readiness assessment comes in.
What is a cloud readiness assessment?
There is no one-size-fits-all cloud migration. Every organization is different. That’s why a cloud readiness assessment is so important. You’ll know what needs to be done to prepare for a move to the cloud and a migration plan to get there.
A cloud readiness assessment is an evaluation of the primary line of business applications and your existing IT infrastructure to establish overall cloud readiness. The information gathered will determine whether your current state is prepared to migrate successfully to the cloud or whether additional work is required.
By the end of the assessment process, you will have a holistic view of your estimated cloud consumption, migration costs, and overall environment, including any dependencies or custom requirements that may affect performance upon migration. This will help you avoid unforeseen circumstances that may pop up during the migration process and support a smooth transition.
Why You Need a Cloud Readiness Assessment
You're probably thinking, "I already know what’s on our network, I don't need an assessment.”
A cloud readiness assessment is about more than just data gathering. It’s about evaluating your business goals for moving to the cloud and creating a plan that aligns with them. Some workloads may make sense to move to the cloud, while others may require rearchitecting or refactoring to support cloud delivery. Your goals, budget, applications, dependencies, and compliance requirements all play into the overall success of your cloud journey.
A cloud readiness assessment is especially critical if your organization wants to migrate to the public cloud but does not have good documentation on the following:
- Network diagrams, including Internet Service Provider details
- Age of network equipment and or lack of a secondary Internet circuit
- IT system inventory and what applications are running for the business
- Business continuity and disaster recovery preparedness, including a lack of defining recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) for each primary business application
- Application dependencies and business process workflows
Benefits of a Cloud Readiness Assessment
1. Alignment of Goals. A core component of successful cloud migration is the consideration of overarching business objectives and how cloud services will help you achieve them. Both IT staff and business stakeholders need to be engaged to ensure that the business justifications for moving the organization to the cloud are in sync. It's key that the overall business strategy aligns with the long-term goals of the business.
2. Data Gathering. Gathering information regarding the existing IT environment of all sites and locations is an important step in the assessment. Like any good data, it will make for a more informed assessment and overall strategy. A cloud readiness assessment typically includes:
- Documentation of network paths to the Internet and the age of equipment
- Identification of primary and/or secondary routes to the Internet
- If and how the cloud is currently being used for its applications
3. App Readiness. We see it all the time: businesses think they know how their apps will interact post-migration. It’s not until they’re dealing with delays and decreases in productivity that they wish they’d performed a better assessment of their applications. Determining the cloud readiness of an application differs from the process for your network architecture and systems.
- Review each application, and how it's architected (for instance, client/server or web-based), and determine how to run that application in the cloud. That application should offer the same performance or, hopefully, better while running in the public cloud.
- Work with the application vendor to ensure migrating the application to the cloud is supported.
- Determine if the application is web-based and if migration to Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Software as a Service (SaaS) is an option. This can significantly reduce overall management costs and reduce the IT burden of managing applications, operating systems, etc.
4. Cost estimation and planning. Does the cost of moving to the cloud outweigh the existing investment in your on-premises IT infrastructure? Do you know what your desired business outcomes are? What is your budget for operating expenses and capital expenses? A cloud readiness assessment will answer all of these questions.
When it comes down to it, conducting a readiness assessment before migrating to the cloud is just smart. It’s a great way to avoid unwanted surprises during the cloud migration while also setting expectations for overall functionality.
Don’t make moving to the cloud harder than it should be. As a top Microsoft partner, ProArch has moved 1,000s of organizaitons to the cloud. Explore our cloud capabilities and reach out to our team with any questions. Remember: The best migration process is a well-prepared one.