In the past, you may have read blog posts that touch on strategizing or readying your move to the cloud, but this one will be covering a topic a little more specific. I am going to discuss migrating workloads and innovation with building net-new workloads on Microsoft Azure. As you probably know, there are many motivating factors as to why one should make the move the cloud. Read below to learn more about the important steps to take for a successful migration and innovation when moving to Azure.
Azure Migration Guide
Before migrating to Azure, you will need to choose which method works best for you. I am going to discuss the basics of migrating applications and resources from on-premises environments to Azure. As you begin your journey to developing your migration strategy, consider the following:
- Will my migrating applications work in the cloud
- What is the best strategy (regarding technology, tools, and migrations) for my application?
- How do I minimize downtime during the migration?
- How do I control costs?
- How do I track resource costs and bill them accurately?
- How do I ensure we remain compliant and meet regulations?
- How do I meet legal requirements for data sovereignty in certain countries?
- The above questions will help as you prepare to deploy resources in Azure, including:
- Configure prerequisites. Plan and prepare for migration.
- Assess your technical fit. Validate the technical readiness and suitability for migration.
- Manage costs and billing. Look at the costs of your resources.
- Migrate your services. Perform the actual migration.
- Organize your resources. Lock resources critical to your system and tag resources to track them.
- Optimize and transform. Use the post-migration opportunity to review your resources.
- Secure and manage. Ensure that your environment is secure and monitored properly.
- Get assistance. Get help and support during your migration or post-migration activities.
Migration Approach
The first step in your migration strategy should be analyzing how compatible your candidate applications are with available cloud-hosting technologies. The Cloud Adoption Framework’s migration tools decision guide is a helpful resource from Microsoft to get started. There are four migration approaches to choose from – rehost, refactor, rearchitect, rebuild. Regardless of the approach you end up selecting, there are first and third-party tools that can assist you with migration as well as project management. Once you determine the workloads, you can begin migration! The Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure recommends the following steps for a smooth migration:
- Create a balanced portfolio with an end-state in mind.
- Validate that the landing zone has been deployed and is ready to host workloads.
- Use the Azure Migration Guide to guide your first migration workload.
- Modifications are okay – if necessary, expand the scope of the cloud migration.
- Validate any modifications against Azure migration best practices.
- Improve the migration process by evaluation and optimizing aspects of your process as you scale
Innovation in the Cloud
For the most part, cloud adoption efforts focus on the migration and modernization of existing workloads. However, innovation can often provide the greatest business value. Cloud adoption-related innovation can unlock new technical skills and expanded business capabilities.
The innovation phase of the Cloud Adoption Framework focuses on items that provide you with the highest ROI in your portfolio. To begin innovating, start with these steps provided by Microsoft in the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure:
- Build consensus on the business value of innovation
- Create a minimum viable product, reference the Azure Innovation Guide
- Ensure architectural decisions follow best practices for each tool in the toolchain
- Build, measure, learn by creating customer partnerships – for example, implement feedback loops in each iteration of the product
Innovation = Invention + Adoption
The above information regarding Innovation is not rocket science; it is more of following the equation, Innovation = Invention + Adoption. Microsoft partners can benefit greatly from understanding the lifecycle of Microsoft’s Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure, as referenced above. If you have any specific questions regarding Azure or Dynamics 365, reach out to our team at DCG! We have experienced Solution Architects, Developers, and Consultants who can help with your next project.
