Cloud migration is a complex process and involves the process of moving applications, data and other business elements to a cloud environment. The organization should consider several factors while migrating to the cloud, from the immediate benefits to potential risks to long term advantages. A successful cloud migration should have a strategy that would address the benefits and risks involved.

1. Cloud Migration Strategies
Cloudmigrationisa complex processandinvolvesthe processof movingapplications,dataandother
businesselementstoacloudenvironment.The organizationshouldconsiderseveral factorswhile
migratingtothe cloud,fromthe immediate benefitstopotential riskstolongtermadvantages.A
successful cloudmigrationshouldhave astrategythatwould address the benefitsandrisksinvolved.
The factors for choosingthe cloudmigrationapproachcanbe anythingfromusingthe least-disruptive
application compatibility,approach,riskmanagement,performance,HA requirementsandROI. Let’ssee
the differentcloudmigrationstrategiesorganizationsuse tomeettheirobjectives.
Lift and Shift Migration
The lift and shift migration method is about migrating your data and applications without any
changes. It involves lifting the data and applications from its current hosting environment and
shifting to a new host i.e. the cloud. There are no significant changes to the data flow,
applications and other mechanisms. This enables minimal disruption of databases, applications
and authentication mechanism resulting in a swift and cost-effective migration.
Advantages of Lift & Shift Migration Approach

2.  Lift and shift migration approach doesn’t need any changes in the application level as it
merely rehosts the applications, data on the cloud.
 Security and compliance are relatively simple in lift and shift cloud migration as you can
translate the requirements that should b implemented against storage, compute and
network resources.
 There won’t be any significant changes required in the business processes associated
with application as the lift and shift cloud migration approach uses the same
architecture constructs even after the migration to cloud.
 A lift and shift cloud approach from on-premise to the cloud increases agility.
Replatforming is a variation of lift and shift approach and involves a slight modification for the
purpose of taking advantage of new cloud infrastructure. You can also add several new features
during replatforming to enable scaling and allow the applications to gain advantage from the
reserved resources of the cloud environment
Replatforming approach can be a useful step for accomplishing goals like adopting a managed
service or increasing system performance.
ApplicationMigration
Application migration involves moving an application program from one environment to
another. For example. Migration from an on-premises server to a cloud environment or from
one cloud environment to another.
In application migration, the application program is transformed along with the data and the
operating system. There are different strategies for application migration:
1) New system implementation
2) System conversion
New system Implementation:
New system implementation as the name suggests starting over. Although the data is protected
and moved in this process, the applications are built from the scratch or replaced with new
applications.
New system implementation is a complex process and the organization needs to make sure that
all the functionality is being replicated by the new system. The team should be retrained on the
new suite of applications, which might function differently from the previous applications.
New system implementation is also the right approach for business that want to switch to new
application stack instead of being with the existing provider.
System Conversion

3. A systemconversionchangesthe applicationlayerwiththe dataandoperatingsystemlayers.System
conversioninvolveschangesto the landscape’soperations.Systemconversionwhenproperlydone has
more consistencyintermsof performance,have greaterautomation,lessdowntime infuture andlower
costs.The systemconversionshouldbe plannedsothatthe downtime causesminimal disruption.
Technical Migration
Technical Migration upgrades the database and operating systems but maintains the existing
applications. Technical migration is generally implemented to utilize the cloud features such as
automation, increased performance and scalability. This cloud migration strategy helps
business prepare for future application migration. This helps businesses to minimize the
downtime and in turn the disruption and experience the cloud which can be used to plan their
next level of transformation.
It is easy to decide the cloud migration strategy that your business wants to implement.
Designing the strategy and implementing it is the biggest challenge for most businesses. The
migration projects might be delayed, can have cost overruns and other issues that can affect
the process. Alphavima’s migration services provides customers with reliable, cost effective and
proven methods implementing the migration at a faster pace, eliminating the risks of cloud
migration.