The 3 phases of the AWS migration journey

Migrating to the cloud can be complex and challenging, but it doesn’t need to be. With the right plan in place, it can be a rewarding journey that unlocks the benefits of scalability, agility, and cost savings. There’s also funding available at every stage that can be accessed with the help of an eligible AWS Partner like Cloudsoft.

AWS has developed a 3-phase model for cloud migration which is effective for organisations of all sizes: assess, mobilise, and migrate.

So let’s explore these steps in a little more depth.

1 - Assess

The assess phase is the first stage of the cloud migration journey.It’s where you evaluate your existing IT environment to determine readiness for cloud migration. Assess involves gaining a comprehensive understanding of your current infrastructure, applications, and data to identify the best approach for your cloud migration journey.

During the assess phase, you thoroughly evaluate the current environment. This assessment should include identifying workloads that are suitable for migration, evaluating their dependencies, and understanding their performance and security requirements. It is also important at this point to assess the goals and business objectives for the migration, as well as the budget, timeline, and resource requirements.

Key activities in the assess phase include:

• Conducting a workload analysis 
• Creating an inventory of applications and data
• Evaluating the cost and benefits of migration, and linking them to business objectives
• Identifying potential risks and challenges. 

The output from the assess phase should be a clear understanding of the scope, complexity, and feasibility of the cloud migration. These outputs should then serve as a foundation for the subsequent phases. 

2 - Mobilise 

Mobilise is the second stage of the cloud migration journey, and it is where you prepare for the actual migration by planning and organising the necessary resources and processes. Mobilise involves developing a detailed migration plan, setting up the required infrastructure, and creating a roadmap for the migration process.

Key activities in the mobilise phase include:

• Analysing insights gained through the assess phase and defining migration goals, timeline, and budget. 
• Creation of a migration team with the necessary skills and expertise and establishing communication channels and governance processes to support coordination
• Setting up the cloud infrastructure and accounts 
• Develop a detailed migration plan including sequence, timing and dependencies

3 - Migrate

Migrate is the final phase of the cloud migration journey, and it’s where you execute the actual migration of applications, data, and other IT resources.

As part of your migration, you must have proper testing and validation mechanisms to ensure that the migrated workloads function as expected in the cloud environment. This may involve conducting testing of application functionality, performance, and security, and validating against the defined migration goals and success criteria. 

If you operate within a field that has intense security demands and legislation on how data should be stored and handled, it’s important within this step to verify that your new processes within the cloud are compliant with industry standards.

Key activities in the migrate phase include:

• Following the migration plan developed in the mobilise phase
• Run a pilot migration to validate the process and identify issues/challenges 
• Execute the migration tasks according to the defined sequence and timings
• Closely monitor the progress and performance of migrated workloads
• After completion, post-migration optimisation and fine-tuning should be completed

Learn more about cloud migration

The 3-phase migration model provides a structured approach to cloud migration, helping organisations confidently navigate the process. This migration model is tried and tested and provides a blueprint for migration you can trust to deliver for your organisation regardless of size. 

By conducting a comprehensive assessment of the current environment, preparing the necessary resources and processes, and executing a well-defined migration plan, you can be confident that your migration will succeed! 

Get our cloud migration white paper

Learn more about migration with our cloud migration white paper! Delving into the three migration phases and exploring the different migration methods available, our migration white paper is a one-stop shop for all your migration questions!