Azure Migrations are successful when you have the right strategy in place. In many cases, it can be overwhelming trying to figure out where to begin, what questions to ask, and how to implement them. While cloud migration services are unique—a strategy is always created in the same way.

Migrating to Azure is a significant undertaking for on-premise databases, VMware, and applications. However, many businesses make the switch without fully understanding what the potential pitfalls are.

If you’re new to building and deploying Azure applications, this article is here to help! Using this step-by-step guide, you will discover how to migrate your business to Azure successfully.

What is Azure Migration?

The Microsoft Azure cloud platform offers a wide variety of cloud services hosted in a network of data centers around the world. A wide range of these services allows organizations to design, develop, deploy, and manage their applications.

With Azure migration, organizations can optimize costs, secure assets, and achieve resilience. Operations and development teams can benefit from Azure-managed services by reducing operational overheads. For Azure migration to be successful, organizations should rely on tried-and-true approaches and strategies. With automated tools and guidance created specifically for migration projects, experts provide a structured step-by-step process for migrating workloads to Azure.

Migrating to Azure: Strategy, Assessment, and Planning

This Azure migration guide emphasizes that for it to become successful, it boils down to three key activities, such as a roadmap, an Azure migration assessment, and a step-by-step plan.

Strategy

Migrating is a complex process that requires a thoughtful strategy that addresses all aspects. Take these factors into consideration when planning your strategy: 

The next step is to create a realistic timeline that allows for meaningful milestones to be achieved along the way. 

Assessment

Can your applications run in a cloud environment? What benefits will the organization gain from the migration? No matter what, you should always ensure everyone is on the same page by informing all stakeholders and employees prior to the migration.

The following should be included in your assessment: 

With Microsoft’s Virtual Machine Readiness Assessment tool, you can assess the readiness of your infrastructure for virtual machines. During migration, it generates a report that shows which workloads can be moved and if there are any issues.

Planning

You will need to do the following during this phase:

In order to ensure that everyone involved in the process understands their role, it’s important to set clear expectations for stakeholders.

Taking a Step-by-Step Approach to Azure Migration

Do you have trouble migrating to the cloud? It is recommended by Microsoft that you follow a migration process that can help you migrate to Azure successfully and optimize your new environment.

The Azure migration phases will be discussed in more detail below.

Step 1: Planning

Any Azure migration project should be evaluated to determine whether the current infrastructure can be migrated. Following that, your migration strategy should be aligned with your business goals, objectives, and processes.

Are you interested in increasing scalability, for example? Is improved performance what you’re looking for? It’s time to take the next step after identifying your desired outcome. 

Step 2: Identifying Your Resources

In context, these are both time and material resources that will be necessary to complete the migration process. The following should be evaluated:

Answering these questions before you migrate to the cloud provides you with sufficient time and information to plan and execute a successful migration.

Step 3: Conducting an Infrastructure Assessment

Checking the status of your existing infrastructure is the third step in fulfilling your Azure migration checklist.

You will be better able to determine the changes needed before the migration if you take an inventory of your existing IT environment.

Step 4: Preparing a Migration Plan

The next step is to develop a detailed plan for executing the actual migration process once all the necessary resources have been identified. All of these steps are designed to ensure success at every stage—including creating deadlines, assigning tasks, and reviewing processes and procedures. 

In order to complete migration work on schedule and on budget, it is important to have a clear plan in place before starting any work.

Step 5: Monitoring and Testing  

During each stage of execution, it’s crucial to monitor the progress of the migration plan. When you deploy new Azure applications or services, it is important to thoroughly test everything before going live.

It is imperative to identify any potential issues ahead of launch or roll-out in order to resolve them as soon as possible. With this, you can also minimize downtime and data integrity loss.

Step 6: Re-evaluating and Updating Post-Migration  

In order to execute an effective Azure migration, all systems should be reviewed post-migration. It will be necessary to update the software from time to time. If needed, you can apply patches to newly migrated code.

The goal is to ensure that all systems function properly after migration and perform optimally in their new environment. 

Choose a Reliable Cloud Migration Service

It is a challenge to move your on-premises application code to a cloud data center. Our highly skilled engineers at Laminar Consulting Service have extensive experience migrating software to secure, stable, and new platforms. 

As part of the migration process, our team will eliminate any weaknesses in your existing platform so you can trust the integrity of your new system. As a partner, we’re fully aligned with your business needs and are 100% transparent with our customers. 

To discuss the Azure migration step-by-step further, contact us at 888-531-9995 at Laminar Consulting Service today!

With cloud migration, services are distributed over the internet and in remote data centers—so that innovation can be enabled more quickly. Resources can be provisioned with greater flexibility, and economies of scale can be achieved.

Multiple data centers are used by cloud providers like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). In addition, cloud computing is based on two methods that enable standardization and cost efficiency, these are resource sharing and a pay-as-you-go model. 

Simply put, cloud computing allows users to rent their IT infrastructure rather than purchase it. Instead of investing heavily in databases, software, and hardware, customers use services like AWS and Azure to access computational power via the internet and pay as they use it.

Azure Vs. AWS: Key Differences

Cloud kings Azure and AWS are both well-recognized and both fighting for dominance in the cloud sector while revolutionizing the IT world. According to current statistics, AWS accounts for 41.5% of all installed application workloads, while Azure accounts for 29.4%. Another competitor, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), has a 3% share, contributing to the AWS vs. Azure debate.

AWS provides serverless services such as Amazon Kinesis Streams, Amazon SQS Queues, and AWS Lambda Functions for smooth and flexible data collection. In addition to computing, database, content delivery, and storage services, AWS also offers Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

On the other hand, Azure offers computing, networking, data management databases, and performance services—and developers can use the Azure Machine Learning Studio to write, test, and deploy algorithms. 

When it comes to availability in regions, there are 22 geographic regions and 14 data centers within Amazon Web Service. In total, there are over 114 edge locations and 12 regional edge caches. Meanwhile, there are 54 regions in Microsoft Azure, each with at least three availability zones and 116 edge locations.

When comparing AWS with Azure, AWS offers a Linux and Windows product marketplace, while Azure has a limited Linux ecosystem despite having a large partner network. To determine which is best for your business, let’s take a closer look at their features and services.

Storage Options in the Cloud

Having adequate storage is essential for the cloud deployment of organizations. It is important to note that Azure and AWS have almost equal strengths in this area—however, their offerings are vastly different. While the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Elastic Block Store (EBS), and Glacier are available through Amazon Web Services, Azure Storage Services provides disk storage, blob storage, and standard archives.

With AWS S3, customers can benefit from scalable, secure, and robust storage solutions for structured and unstructured big data. The Azure platform, on the other hand, offers data storage options such as Azure Blogs, Azure Queues, Azure Disks, Azure Tables, and Azure Files.

In both cases, the number of permissible objects is unlimited. There are, however, 5TB of object size restrictions on AWS, while 4.75TB are available in Azure.

Data Protection and Security

When it comes to ensuring enhanced privacy, AWS selects secure options and settings by default. Microsoft Azure uses its Cloud Defender service for security and data privacy—an artificial intelligence-powered solution that safeguards against new threats as they emerge.

The Azure platform may, however, not be 100% secure by default, such as deploying virtual machine instances with all ports open unless otherwise configured.

Licensing and License Mobility

It is important for Azure and AWS to ensure that customers don’t have to worry about licensing hassles or license mobility concerns. With both services adopting pay-as-you-go pricing structures, customers are only charged for the services they use. If they have already paid for the service, they are eligible for license mobility in Microsoft Azure.

While Azure is easier for Windows administrators to set up, AWS offers more features and is more customizable. When comparing AWS and Azure, it’s clear that most of the services are identical. 

Azure, however, offers more Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) features than AWS. Among them are Azure Scheduler, Azure Site Recovery, Azure Visual Studio Online, and Azure Event Hubs. Amazon Web Services, however, seems to lead when it comes to flexibility, adaptability to the open-source community, and revenue generation.

Database Services Capacities

These two solutions support both structured and unstructured information, as well as big data. AWS users can take advantage of Amazon RDS for durable data management, whereas Azure users can use Azure SQL server for database management. 

Comparing AWS vs Azure, AWS provides a relatively mature environment for handling big data. Neither system has a problem working with relational databases nor not only SQL (NoSQL) databases. These storage solutions are widely available, long-lasting, and provide simple, automatic replication.

Even though AWS offers more instance types, Azure’s tooling and interface are very straightforward to use, making it easy to complete multiple database tasks.

Pricing Structure

In terms of pricing, AWS and Azure both offer reasonable rates and a pay-as-you-go pricing option. Moreover, both providers offer free introductory packages to show users how their systems can integrate with on-premises applications. On AWS, instances are priced hourly and can be purchased in the following ways: 

On the other hand, Azure charges per minute, so users have a more specific pricing component than AWS. Additionally, there are options for short-term commitments to choose between prepaid and monthly charges. Subscriptions on Azure for a short period of time offer greater flexibility.

In addition to this, pricing for Microsoft Azure using BT MPLS ExpressRoute is available, allowing you to extend your private corporate network into the cloud with the appropriate functionality. 

However, comparing the two options, Azure is usually more expensive and can increase a company’s cloud costs. One example of this is the cost of Azure instances that increase as they grow in size. An Azure server configured with 256GB RAM and 64vPCUs will cost nearly twice as much as an AWS server.

Is AWS or Azure Better for Your Organization?

With AWS  vs. Azure, in comparison, we’re trying to determine which cloud platform is the best. AWS may look better overall, but your organization’s specific needs might make Azure the better choice for you. Thus, in this cloud war, there is no clear winner. In the end, it all depends on what your company needs.

Ultimately, AWS and Azure are both leading companies with the best products and services. The only thing you need from now on is a competent cloud provider to open up the whole world of cloud opportunities for you.

With Laminar Consulting, our team will recommend the best cloud services solution depending on the needs of your business development. Additionally, we ensure a smooth post-migration process with our cloud migration services. You can email us at contactus@laminarco.com or by calling us at 888-531-9995 at Laminar Consulting today!

Cloud migration inevitably involves serious organizational changes. Internal supporters, like technical evangelists, and external partners guide you through it.

Organizational change and transformation prepare two traps: a technical failure and a non-technical adaptation of the working routines that your employees have difficulties anticipating.

Workflow Digitalization: The Limits of Customization

Sales management, candidate management in HR, labeling in manufacturing, finance reports generation — almost every workflow would nowadays find an automation vendor.

But every company is different. And most of the out-of-the-box solutions were created with a kind of common denominator in mind. They provide templates that an average business can use. The problem is, there is no such thing as an average company. Each workflow digitalization and automation needs a customization effort to some extent. Even though the new platform will be adjusted for the company staff to enable easy use, they still have to learn at least a new user interface.

Each migration is aimed at sustaining and facilitating efficient workflows. Thus, sometimes it is necessary to get rid of less efficient ones or come up with a new design for them. It may seem an edge case at first glance, but changing working routines may cause consequent insecurity among employees.

How to Get an Organization-Wide Support

Stepping out of the usual path in everyday duties may be a bit frustrating for your employees. They are worried that their working performance will actually drop instead of an expected increase. It can even come to a soft resistance.

That’s why you should obtain some supporters that can spread the word about the bright sides of new technology and enlighten about a necessary adaptation period. Technical evangelists and early adopters help you to prepare the rest of the company’s staff for the forthcoming changes and raise their commitment.

Technical Evangelists

Technical evangelists are employees with a strong technical background but highly sociable and possessing an informal authority in the company. They enjoy explaining new technologies to other folks. They are far from being nerds; they help people to understand how cloud migration works without overwhelming anyone with unnecessary details.

Technical evangelists are often social hubs. You would know them already from informal team events or can quickly find them. When approaching a technical evangelist, remember to talk about the advantages of the platform migration for the employees and focus less on the business numbers.

Early Adopters

While technical evangelists won’t be dealing with the new technology after the migration, early adopters will. Those are mostly the power users of a new platform, such as senior specialists and team leaders. Once you’ve convinced them, they will find a way to sell new digital workflow software to their colleagues.

Of course, early adopters need to hear about the same kind of advantages before they express their readiness to help you. They should bear a message that a cloud migration process has a destination beneficial for all employees.

An Organizational Change Is a Masterwork

When you decide to roll out new digital workflow solutions in your company, help your employees to feel secure about the forthcoming changes. The most novel technology won’t work as expected if your best employees leave the company due to insecurity. It will require a lot of effort to subvert their fears and resistance.

Since you need to concentrate on change management, you may consider outsourcing the technical part of the cloud migration. Laminar Consulting provides cloud migration services on any scale, from small businesses to big enterprises. We can assist you in project planning and implementation leaving you enough time and resources to deal with the other aspects of cloud migration.

Laminar helps you to focus on essentials. Simply scroll down this page for one of the contact opportunities.

Cutover, Staged, or Hybrid: Understanding Migration Types

Learn how to decide on the right type of cloud or data migration and choose between cutover, stages, and hybrid.

Cloud or data migration may become a breakthrough for your company. Each business needs a unique migration scenario to make this innovation work for a profit.

Before Drafting a Migration Project Plan

Your employees enjoined using the same CRM or ERP for years, even despite its quirks. But one day, the clumsiness of it grew unbearable for the business.

That’s how companies typically come to data or cloud migration. In a few lucky cases, moving the storage or database is enough. Why lucky? Because your employees won’t get involved, except for the developers and system administrators. When you have to replace the interface, too, it means a long adoption and a lot of learning for the end users.

To avoid pushing your people too hard and ensure technical success, you should first choose the right migration type. Doing so ultimately influences everything in your project plan: the schedule, the cost, people involved, vendors to contract, and of course, the final result.

Data Migration Scenarios

Different classifications are possible, but we are currently interested in one based on the project timing.

Cutover, Known as the Big Bang

How does cutover migration work? Company staff keeps working with the existing system, while a team or external partner develops a whole new one. Once the new platform is ready, you set a day when you cut off access to the old system and replace it completely with the new one.

Such a plan for cloud migration suggests switching your cloud technology with a single move. Thus, it has been proven to be a bit risky and deserves its second name: the Big Bang.

Staged Migration

This is definitely a more relaxed data migration strategy. With the staged migration method, you divide all users into groups and migrate their accounts in bunches. The first bunch—usually, the power users—will help developers catch the last imperfections and fix them before adopting the technology in the entire company.

This strategy has no strict timing and no “point of no return,” and should be a strong consideration by migration beginners. It works well for migrating email accounts since it rarely matters if everybody in the company uses the same email settings or not.

Hybrid Migration

With this migration method, you isolate independent features or workflows and migrate them separately. For instance, you move your calendar to a new cloud and keep using the old provider for email. Sometimes, companies run two systems in parallel, synchronizing the databases to ensure that all employees have access to the same data.

The hybrid approach may lead to confusion among end users. Not everyone can keep in mind which system does what and where one should enter new information.

Factors to Consider Before Migration

An efficient migration plan should evolve out of the considerations concerning timing, resources at your disposal, and specifics of the workflows that you’re migrating. A few basic questions that you should discuss with your stakeholders in advance:

Most of the answers depend on the company size. A large enterprise is more likely to have an experienced developer team. But it also bears more risks in case of a failed migration. These can be negated by adopting a new cloud gradually.

Smaller companies may lack development expertise, but they’re easier to move at once. Most likely, they don’t need a highly customized solution and can obtain a ready one to roll it out quickly.

Indeed, we propose a few basic questions to clarify before migration. Technical issues are specific to each company. For a secure cloud migration, we kindly recommend getting advice from Laminar, an established consultant with a proven track of trouble-free data and cloud migrations.

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