Cloud migration leads to more efficient, scalable and better-performing services. However, there are many examples of cloud migrations that have ended in disastrous circumstances. Poor planning, underestimation of complexity and a lack of organization result in disruption of the business. That’s the opposite of why you implement cloud migration in the first place.
Aqlix has a wealth of experience helping organizations mitigate problems caused by cloud migration as well as executing successful, transformative migration without the need for remediation. Through cloud application service, we help companies implement migration projects with the right degree of discipline and organization.
Common Cloud Migration Mistakes That Derail Projects
Most migrations that fail are the result of issues with planning and execution that occur months or years before any actual migration work begins. Understanding the common failure patterns of cloud migration allows you to avoid some costly mistakes. The core technology used for most migrations is mature and reliable. It’s the mistakes made around those technologies that tend to dominate how long these failures take to resolve.
1. Migrating Without a Clear Strategy or Roadmap
A migration is much faster and less disruptive when a clear roadmap is created with a description of what each step in the migration means. Migration without a roadmap means workloads are migrated in an illogical order and results in a duplication of effort and wasted time.
A migration roadmap describes the steps in which workloads are migrated as well as the order and the strategies used to manage workload dependencies. Planning in detail how migrations are to be executed saves a lot of time in the long run.
- Unclear sequencing: Workloads get moved in an order that ignores dependencies, causing issues mid-migration.
- No defined success criteria: If teams don’t know what objectives are achievable, they won’t know if the migration was considered a success.
2. Underestimating Data Migration Complexity
Applications are easier to move than the data that supports those applications. Data integrity issues typically show up at the last minute and affect the completion of the project.
The migration of legacy data, data with various formats, and large volumes of data can be underestimated and are virtually impossible to plan for. The companies who fail to consider the difficulties around migration end up having the most painful surprises during cutover.
- Underestimated data volume: Data that is poorly defined can take a long time to migrate and is underestimated.
- Data integrity gaps: Irregular data formats or a lack of data validation can result in issues that appear after the deployment of the system.
3. Ignoring Cost Management From the Start
Cloud environments provide a great deal of flexibility, but without cost management, that flexibility can result in very high costs once workloads go live. Businesses discover cost overruns after migration is complete.
Before migration, businesses must ensure cost monitoring, resource tagging, and budget alerts. Without these, metrics for the savings potential of using the cloud infrastructure will be lost.
- Unmonitored resource sprawl: If resources are not tagged and managed, it leads to costs skyrocketing and unused resources.
- No budget alerts in place: Teams notice that they overspent after the firm incurs a large and unscheduled business expense.
How to Avoid Turning Migration Into a Costly Setback
It takes deliberate planning, specialization, and the application of the testing-before-implementation principle to identify and avoid these issues. Though this does not eliminate all risks, it greatly reduces the probability of a major failure. Instead of pursuing a migration free of all risks, the goal should be to identify all the risks that may remain and determine if they can be managed.
1. Building a Phased Migration Plan
To avoid a migration where everything needs to happen at once, workloads should be migrated in phases. At each phase, teams should have an opportunity to validate work so far. This means phased migration dramatically limits the scope of any single error.
Aqlix has a deliberate approach to application modernization that favors a phased migration. Phased migrations purposely limit the impact of an error to easily workaround issues. Further, phased migrations allow firms the flexibility to adjust their migration plans in accordance with learnings from the migrations themselves.
- Manageable migration stages: Phased movements of workloads mean that even large mistakes only affect a single phase and not necessarily the entire project.
- Room to adjust course: Early phases reveal lessons that can improve planning for the stages that follow.
2. Involving the Right Expertise Early
Different facets of cloud migration such as architecture, security, and optimized cloud economics, are skilled areas that have evolved beyond the day-to-day experiences of many internal teams. Ignorance of late adoption of this expertise has resulted in costly mistakes.
Aqlix’s Technology Consulting team intervenes during the planning phase to help businesses avoid costly roadblocks before they occur. More often than not, easy-to-implement early-stage solutions circumvent a multitude of late-stage problems.
- Early architectural guidance: Involving specialists during planning prevents structural mistakes that are costly to fix later.
- Proactive risk identification: Due to their experience, skilled teams can recognize and address avoidable pitfalls long before they begin to cause real issues.
3. Testing and Validating Before Full Cutover
Failures during migrations almost always stem from failing to test adequately before a full cutover. Without adequate testing, a migration almost always leads to disruption for both internal teams and external customers.
Most of the time, the lack of testing before a migration leads to customers experiencing unknown issues. Thorough testing of performance, security, and functionality significantly reduces the surprises that will inevitably come after a migration.
- Comprehensive pre-cutover testing: Issues with performance and security will only impact the end users if adequate testing is not done before a cutover.
- Safe rollback planning: If something unexpected occurs during a cutover, having a tested fallback plan decreases the overall risk of the cutover.
Conclusion
Cloud migration doesn’t fail because the technology is unreliable; it fails when planning, data complexity, and cost management get treated as afterthoughts rather than core parts of the project. These mistakes are avoidable with the right approach from the start.
Aqlix’s tools help enterprises plan for the unforeseen hurdles of most cloud migrations, saving enterprises the headaches and financial burden of failed migrations. Unexpected delays and unplanned expenses are two indicators that the Aqlix IT Solutions team can help you resolve. If either happens for you during a migration, reach out to their team for assistance.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most common cause of failed cloud migrations?
Most migrations fail from lack of planning. Often people will migrate data without consideration for the order or related data, or even what the final migration endpoint will be.
Why does data migration often take longer than expected?
Each step of a migration takes time and factors that are often overlooked during the planning of that step, such as the volume of data, inconsistent data structures, legacy data, and the integrity of the data.
How can businesses avoid unexpected cloud cost overruns?
Budget, set up alerts, and tag resources. If a company does not have these tools in place for cloud usage prior to the migration, cloud flexibility will potentially cause overspending by allowing companies unchecked use of the cloud.
Is a phased migration approach always better than migrating everything at once?
The answer is most often yes. A phased approach minimizes the impact of any mistakes made. Rather than taking a phased approach, a single approach exposes a company to the potential for a large, disruptive failure.
When should a business bring in outside expertise for a cloud migration?
During the first phases of planning when we’re still flexible, Aqlix identifies common problems and risks early on. This way more time can be saved in the long run and problems won’t become as urgent to deal with.
