HOW TO – google cloud migration? [STRATEGY, Process, Tools]

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Google Cloud Migration – Strategy, Process, Tools, Benefits

Google Cloud Migration refers to a process by which enterprises move part of or all their on-premises data center capabilities to Google Cloud, including their app deployed on-premises and other services. It can also mean moving between multiple clouds or cloud providers. Enterprises are rapidly migrating to the cloud to leverage the benefits. However, this migration can be a challenge even for the most experienced technical teams. Therefore, you need to plan and execute your migration carefully.

The Process

Cloud migration is a process, and enterprises are often at different stages of their cloud migration journey. Although this process varies across different enterprises, they generally follow a similar path with a common starting and endpoint. So where do we start?

1. Defining a starting point – It could be on-prem, private hosting environment, or another cloud.

2. Determine the type of workloads to migrate – Which helps you to assess the complexity of the migration. They could be legacy workloads, which are more complex to migrate, or cloud-native, which are less complex.

3. Pick a Strategy for Cloud Migration – Lift and Shift, Refactor, Revise, Rebuild, Replace.
4. Assess your readiness for Cloud – This depends on four themes including learning programs, leadership support, experience to scale cloud-native services, and the ability to protect your current environment. For each, you should be in any one of these phases, tactical, strategic, or transformative.
5. The actual migration – This tends to have 4 phases: assessment, planning, deployment, and optimization. By the end of the optimization phase, you will be taking full advantage of cloud-native technology.

The Strategy

One of the main reasons that cause enterprises to face challenges in their cloud migration is the failure to devote enough time and attention to their strategy. Enterprises have different needs and you need to select a strategy that suits yours. According to Gartner, there are 5 strategies to choose from:

• Lift and Shift (Rehosting) 

Suppose your business is not well versed with the cloud you can simply redeploy your data and applications on Google cloud’s servers, thereby utilizing it as an IaaS.

• Refactor/ Lift, tinker, and shift

Refactoring is similar to rehosting except you modify and optimize your applications and Google Cloud becomes a platform as a service for you.

• Revise

This refers to making significant changes to the architecture and code of the systems you have moved to the cloud to take full advantage of the services being offered by Google Cloud. This strategy requires you to have already moved services and data to the cloud and that you have advanced knowledge.

• Rebuild 

Rebuilding is similar to revising except here you would be replacing existing code/architecture with new ones to meet emerging business needs.

• Replace

This approach is similar to rebuild except here you migrate to a prebuilt application provided by a third-party ISV. The only thing you will retain is your data.

Cloud Migration Tools

Transferring your data to the cloud is a key part of your migration to the cloud. Google Cloud provides a free migration tool called Google Migrate for Compute Engine. This tool uses the lift and shift approach when you migrate your applications, your data will be migrated in the background. There are other third-party tools that you can utilize, but you will have to pay for them.

Benefits of moving to the Google Cloud

• Fully managed solutions – When your enterprise workloads have been moved to Google Cloud, you won’t have to worry about managing infrastructure for your apps and data.
• Cost-effectiveness – Because Google Cloud will take care of infrastructure management, businesses tend to spend a lot less to operate on the cloud.
• Scalability – Google Cloud offers seamless autoscaling for most of its services. You will be able to scale your applications automatically depending on traffic.
• High performance – As a result of autoscaling, applications and websites hosted on Google Cloud tend to deliver a much-improved performance, which enriches the end-user experience.

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