Cloud Migration Factory: Best practices for cloud migration — how CDW can amplify your success

Go on, search “Best practices for cloud migration” or better yet, ask your favorite AI bot. What did you find? Hundreds of posts and articles about exactly what to do... Define your objectives, come up with a plan, assess your environment, choose the right provider, security and so on. Congratulations, you’re ready to migrate your business to the cloud; or maybe you already have, or maybe you think you already have. Odds are, if you’re reading this, you’re somewhere along on your cloud journey – Because the truth is, the cloud is more than remote storage, hyperscale data centers, and SaaS providers.
 
The cloud is about establishing a new set of patterns and practices with a goal of modernizing your business to gain a competitive edge, driving innovation and growth, and ultimately to better serve your customers; and there’s definitely a right way and wrong way to do this. You could invest countless hours into research, reading blog posts (like this one), reviewing the AWS Cloud Migration Factory implementation guide and taking copious notes — and voila... You’re an expert with countless years of experience and expertise, right? No, we both know this is not how it, or should I say “IT” works. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for learning, self-awareness, and self-improvement, but when it comes to your organization’s infrastructure and undertaking a cloud migration — I have one “best practice”, outsource the expertise.
 
That’s right, work with a trusted partner (like CDW), a team of experts with years of experiences, the certifications, and portfolio to back it up. Ask questions about their process, their certifications, clients. Are they a one trick pony or do they offer a diverse range of services to meet you where you are on your migration journey? Do they care about your business, your people, your culture, and working with you to create a cloud strategy based on your specific organizational needs? What’s their implementation plan, how will they help prepare you and your team, what about software and licensing, what about after implementation and managing your cloud? TCO, ROI... I could go on...

I’m sure all these questions and more have you thinking maybe outsourcing the expertise is great, but where do I start? That’s a great question and the truth is...  it depends. It depends on where you are on your journey. Have you evaluated your current software and licensing across your organization? Have you assessed your “readiness” for cloud adoption — current operating models, governance, security, existing IT infrastructure, and application portfolio? Have you created a comprehensive gap analysis, TCO calculations, or a migration strategy?
 
Let’s face it, a full-scale cloud migration doesn’t...  shouldn’t... can’t happen in a bubble. It requires input from your executive leadership and key stakeholders sharing their input and aligning business goals, it requires decisions backed by data, it requires a cost-efficient migration strategy, and timely results. As they say, it takes a village, or as we say around here, a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE). This is your team that will define and establish leadership functions to formulate a clear cloud strategy, establish governance, drive initiatives, and provide oversight around cloud adoption — because you’re just one person and doing all of this in addition to your day to day would, in a word, be a bit overwhelming.

And this is where CDW’s AWS Professional Services team can help! With over 800 engineers, countless implementations, and the know how to get you from where you are to where you want to be. As an example, let’s say you are ready to begin migrating workloads at scale or perhaps you’ve already started your at-scale migration only to hit a wall; CDW’s AWS Cloud Migration Factory is just what you need. We follow the AWS migration framework to move your on-prem workloads in an organized and agile way, with the tools in place to help you through your full-blown migration — application dependency mapping, wave planning, and replatforming your workloads... All of this while minimizing disruption to keep your business running.
 
Now, I haven’t even gotten to the parts about modernizing legacy applications and processes (like DevOps & Infrastructure as Code), upskilling your current staff (did you know CDW is an AWS Training Partner?), reducing risks, managing your cloud (or clouds) and so on… I could, but I think I’ll save that for the experts at CDW.

Click here to learn more about how we can help regardless of where you are on your cloud migration journey.

• CDW's License Evaluation and Discovery Service (LEADS)

   

• Cloud Readiness Assessment

• CDW Cloud Mobilize Engagement

• CDW Cloud Migration Factory (CCMF)

• Database Migration

• Storage Migration

• AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP)