Cloud Migration

For organisations, a cloud migration strategy is defined according to its business needs. It involves moving the applications and environments that are usually hosted on-premises to a cloud infrastructure provider. With this remote installation, you can access your services and data via the internet, offering a number of advantages such as long-term cost reduction, scalability, and better performance.

1. Planning your cloud migration
2. Strategies to implement
3. The benefits of the cloud for your business
4. Why choose OVHcloud?
5. Migrate to the public cloud
6. Migrate to the private cloud

Starting a cloud migration strategy is a great opportunity to scale up your application portfolio, information system and underlying infrastructure. With an in-depth analysis, you can identify the strengths and weaknesses of your IT systems, and determine your cloud service needs accordingly.

To facilitate migration and reduce the costs of moving your applications, an inventory, review, and analysis should be considered. Obsolete code may be removed, unused applications can be deleted, and non-essential data may be archived.

Determining what you want to achieve with the migration will give you an implementation framework and some guiding actions to achieve it. Moving to cloud solutions is a project that takes place in several stages, and requires an investment that will prove to be beneficial in the long term.

Each application considered for a migration has a specific architecture, which must be taken into account to ensure that it can migrate under the best conditions. The “6 Rs” of migrating applications to the cloud cover the most common situations encountered in companies. This is a non-exhaustive list of proven strategies, each with a specific purpose.

Rehosting

Rehosting, or “lift and shift”, is one of the easiest strategies to apply. It involves moving an existing environment to the cloud (usually the public cloud). This quick method allows you to switch your different elements as they are, without needing to touch the code or employ large resources. There are tools available to facilitate this migration, but you may also want to start the process manually to become familiar with how the cloud works. However, re-hosting does not fully utilise the advantages that make the cloud so popular. Since it does not require any application code to be optimised for running in the cloud, some features, such as elasticity or on-demand provisioning, are not used in the most optimal way. One of the major advantages of migrating from a lift and shift model is moving from a CAPEX model to an OPEX model. One of the main tasks for this type of migration strategy is to transpose the organisation’s IT security rules to the cloud.

Repurchasing

Moving to the cloud provides an opportunity to review your applications and other services used. This strategy generally involves replacing applications that are not core businesses with their SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) equivalent, following a portfolio analysis. It involves training your teams on the new tools you have set up, which is still minimal work compared to the expected gains. SaaS applications are often chosen for their ease of implementation and for the fact that their maintenance is carried out by the cloud service provider.

Replatforming

By migrating to a new platform, you can transpose your current environment and take advantage of what the cloud can offer. So it’s not just about hosting your applications in the cloud – it’s about taking the opportunity to optimise what you can do without having to overhaul the entire code or architecture. By adapting your databases before migrating, you can get the most out of your cloud features, and get a better performance. Although this method requires a partial revision of the application architecture, it generally requires only minor modifications.

Refactoring

Refactoring is considered the most complex strategy to implement. It involves redesigning the architecture of our applications in order to adapt them to the cloud and make the most of its features. However, the resource costs and time spent by teams are outweighed by improved efficiency in the long run. To be carried out in an optimal manner, this method requires new application objectives to be organised and put in place.

Retiring

When implementing a cloud migration, it makes sense to review your systems, architecture, and applications. Some services are becoming obsolete, and are being replaced by native, automated features in the cloud. Others may be less useful than before and can be dropped during the migration.

Once this review is complete and you have identified the features to remove, you can focus on migrating the applications and services that are essential to your architecture. However, removing does not necessarily mean deleting. When it comes to data, it may simply be more economical and logical to archive it with a suitable service.

Retaining

For various reasons, it is sometimes necessary to keep a system or application as it is – for example, for cost reasons that cannot be absorbed at the time of migration, requiring you to switch over the important services first. A system with data subject to specific certifications and compliances will also require additional predispositions, which may delay its migration to the cloud. Critical applications that should not be interrupted are sometimes kept on the on-premises infrastructure. The replacement application is developed in parallel in order not to cause service interruptions or to impact the business activities.

Adapt in real time

Any system accessible on the web has experienced a traffic spike or service saturation at some point. Often, the resources have been sufficient up until that point, and decisions are made following a significant event. Often a major concern, the cloud’s ability to adapt to new situations and respond to fluctuating or occasional requirements has become one of its strong points, thanks to its flexibility. There is no need to add components, hardware or network connections within the datacentre. Everything is managed by the service provider, either automatically or through technical teams. In an sector where responsiveness is key, time savings and cloud scalability enable real-time decision-making and implementation.

Control your budget

By using a cloud computing service provider, you benefit from the expertise and control of an industrialised cloud, meaning that you make savings on a number of tasks that were previously your responsibility. Hardware maintenance and upgrading is carried out on a large scale by the operator, which also has a positive impact on the prices of your services. You don’t need to direct teams to maintain and update your infrastructure; instead, your resources are put to better use in value-added missions.

What’s more, you no longer need to provision resources in advance, or pay for features that are not in use. You can switch from a CAPEX investment model to an OPEX operating expenses model.

Simplify your work

Everything has been designed to simplify the work of your IT teams, application operation and infrastructure management. Your IT operations teams and development teams no longer have to carry out the tedious steps of managing hardware infrastructure, updates, and complex system monitoring. The focus is on security, with detailed user rights management and an architecture that protects sensitive data from external risks.

By opting for an open, interoperable cloud, you can very easily migrate workloads, connect different services, and strengthen your infrastructure’s resilience.

Gain performance

By design, the cloud greatly improves the distribution of available resources. While some servers in an infrastructure may not be used to their full capacity, servers in a cloud environment can now be allocated on demand. This way, the maximum resources are allocated to the workloads that require the most processing. This optimised allocation of resources within the infrastructure is beneficial on many levels. The budget is better managed, the varying computing power requirements are easily dealt with, and by extension, the effectiveness of hosted web services and applications is improved.

Security, certifications and compliance

Security is at the heart of what we do and forms the basis for the design of all our products, from manufacturing servers to the services they support. We comply with the local regulations in force, while meeting a range of certifications and compliance standards. Depending on the plan and hosting datacentre, these include SecNumCloud (Trusted Cloud), PCI DSS (banking data) and HDS (healthcare data) certifications.

Data reversibility

Our open ecosystem is designed to be reversible. It’s easy to migrate to our solutions, and also to external solutions, without any constraints. As well as leaving you in control of your applications and data, reversibility is important if you want to implement a hybrid cloud or multi-cloud strategy.

Data protection

We treat all data with the utmost respect and guarantee its protection, whether it is sensitive, personal, or critical. OVHcloud complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and opposes any form of rule circumvention. We are not constrained by extraterritorial laws that could undermine the confidentiality of your data.

Transparency

OVHcloud has always communicated transparently. This is a value we uphold and apply at all levels. Clear and precise billing, data confidentiality, datacentre location and applicable jurisdiction: all of this information is available and set out clearly.

The advantages of the Public Cloud

Advantages of the Private Cloud