Migrating from AWS to Azure? Here is what you need to know.

If you are one such organization contemplating a public cloud-to-public cloud migration project then this article will offer you an overview of things to consider before making the transition.

We have noticed that there are some specific reasons for an organization to migrate from one cloud platform to another!

If your reason is listed here, then great, know that it is quite common for most companies to flit between the top platforms. If your reason is not mentioned here, leave a comment and tell us why and where you are looking to migrate.

• Diversification of CSPs (Cloud Service Providers) — As a procurement strategy or hedge against vendor lock-in, enterprise clients may benefit from utilizing two (or more) public cloud providers.

• Working Staff skills - Cloud skills can sometimes be in short supply on the market. A client's in-house or partner skills can influence cloud platform decisions or course corrections.

• Maturity of Cloud Transformation - As enterprises increase their level of cloud maturity, it may be necessary to revisit early pilot projects to take advantage of new capabilities or to consolidate public cloud providers.

• Contracts or Relations with CSPs - Vendor agreements can influence cloud decisions. Migration to retire contract obligations or use specific licensing perks, such as Microsoft Hybrid Use Benefit (HUB) licensing, are examples of this.

• Mergers and Acquisitions - M&A activity can encourage migration from one cloud provider to another, even in the cloud.

Things to know while switching from one Cloud Service Provider to another

1. Strategy of Migration

The Four Migration Strategies include:

• Rehost -Transfer applications from an on-premises environment to the cloud without modifications.

• Refactor - Moving an application to the cloud platform Azure with few code modifications.

• Rearchitect -Rewriting the application's source code and migrating to a cloud-native architecture.

• Rebuild - Putting the old application to one side and developing identical functionality using Azure Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) features.

2. Knowledge of Application-Architecture

As with other technological projects, understanding application architecture makes life easier. This is a crucial aspect of any cloud migration, including cloud-to-cloud migration. Before any migration, it will be time well spent to understand your application's dependencies, settings, and architecture.

3. Application Compatibility

After migrating to the cloud, the functioning of the application is one of the most important considerations for both software developers and service providers. Nevertheless, most software service providers are still in the exploratory testing phase of how their applications would operate in a public cloud environment.

Before committing to a migration, performance and support should always take precedence, as it is preferable to research deeper into the quality and performance provided by the service provider. By migrating the program to the Azure test environment, we may identify potential problems before moving the application to production.

4. Concealed Charges of Migration

Cloud service providers make migrating to their platform as simple and inexpensive as possible, but you will likely not experience the same advantage while leaving. Consider that most cloud service providers impose some data exit fee. This indicates that you will be charged for data that goes to the cloud provider. This expense can accumulate if you need to migrate a substantial amount of data. In our project, our client had a significant amount of data to transfer, and these fees accumulated.

5. Lack of skills & Expertise

This difficulty may reappear if you decide to switch cloud service providers. If your cloud engineering staff has been working on AWS for the past three years, the shift to Azure will take some time. There may be some similarities between the capabilities, but there will be a requirement for changing skills or enabling.

Conclusion

There are numerous motives for moving from one cloud to another. Some migrate to Azure may be because they are used to the Microsoft ecosystem. Others may do so because they desire enhanced cloud compliance. Some migrate to Azure to satisfy their hybrid cloud needs.

Regardless of the cause, you must know that the migration procedure is not so simple. You need to have a carefully planned strategy and execution plan and research all migration rules or engage a consultant.

Further Reading