A Customized Approach to Cloud Migrations

1. Refactor: This strategy is often the most effort-intensive. It involves the modernization of application to get the most out cloud technologies, such as scaling and severless capabilities.
2. Re-platform: Re-platforming is a popular migration approach that retains as much of the application’s original functionality as possible while augmenting it to use native services in AWS wherever possible. This can include moving the database to a service like RDS or utilizing Elasticache for Redis needs.
3. Repurchase: For some workloads, it’s beneficial to move to SaaS offering, or possibly an AWS Marketplace solution. In these cases, the infrastructure management of applications is often offloaded to the provider.
4. Rehost: Commonly referred to as a “lift- and -shift,” this approach, this involves migrating a “like-for-like” in AWS, usually with services like EC2.
5. Relocate: Relocating infrastructure with little to no modification can be facilitated by using services like VMWare Cloud on AWS. This relocates the hypervisors to the cloud, and uses tooling to interact with native AWS services via the Elastic Network Interface.
6. Retain: A company may opt to retain workloads in -house for a number of reasons, be it dependencies that cannot be easily fulfilled in the cloud, or an application that is marked for retirement. This is often seen with legacy applications that run on mainframes, or with other matured hardware.
7. Retire: When workloads have come to the end of their lifecycle or are made redundant by other applications, they should be retired.

Migrating to the cloud can be a daunting task, as each workload has its own requirements and behaviors. To be successful, it’s critical to have the proper strategy in place. We assess your unique needs, workload, and use case to build a roadmap to a successful migration.

Having a strong cloud foundation in place from the start will set the tone for your future experience. There are a few use cases to consider to identify the strategies and roadmap for your AWS implementation:

1. Workload-Dependent:  Applications drive design. The use of different technologies dictates how your implementation and migration process will look and operate.
2. Automated: A properly designed environment should take full advantage of the cloud and reduce the number of manual tasks that need to be performed. This includes things like taking backups, change management, application scaling, and data lifecycle tasks.
3. Repeatable: Cloud infrastructure should be repeatable so the whole environment can be re-deployed as needed. This may include deploying in multiple regions and creating development and test environments.
4. Consistent: Keep the cloud strategies consistent across your environments so there are fewer surprises in application behavior.

Perficient is a certified Amazon Web Services Partner with more than 10 years of experience delivering enterprise-level applications and expertise in cloud platform solutions, contact center, application modernization, migrations, data analytics, mobile, developer and management tools, IoT, serverless, security, and more.

Paired with our industry-leading strategy and team, we help the world’s leading enterprises tackle the toughest challenges and get the most out of their cloud implementations and integrations.