Cloud Migration: What is the cost of moving to Cloud Services?

If you are looking to modernize your operations, cloud migration is the way to go. However, it is not a small endeavor that you can simply undertake. It requires thorough planning and partnering with the right migration partner. 

Even then, the cost of cloud migration keeps many businesses from doing it. That’s because the upfront cost of cloud migration is high. However, the long-term ROI makes sense and helps reduce operational costs. 

In this post, we’ll discuss cloud migration costs in detail and the different factors to consider when taking on this project. 

What is cloud migration?

It transfers services, digital assets, IT resources, databases, and applications to the cloud infrastructure. The strategic shift to the cloud environment offers a plethora of benefits. It helps your business scale effortlessly and also ensures minimal downtime while allowing for the incorporation of upcoming technologies. 

How to Move to Cloud Services Step by Step

The cloud migration process is different every time. Many variables are involved, such as the migration strategy, scope of the project, processing requirements, size of the project, complexity of data storage, and more.  

However, there’s still a way to standardize the cloud migration, and here’s how Coding Crafts does it;

Conceptualization Of Cloud Migration

This phase typically takes 1-2 weeks. During this phase, we will help you establish the cloud migration goals. The goals could vary from company to company. For instance, some might want to improve the business app’s performance, while others might want to expand the market reach. 

This phase also decides whether to move workloads to the cloud, move databases, or create virtual desktops.

The final part of this phase is creating a dependency flow chart that outlines the entire process. The flowchart is pivotal for complexity analysis and helps provide a much greater sense of the scale of the cloud migration.

Opting for A Cloud Migration Strategy

Once we have executed the cloud migration conceptualization, we will move on to the second phase, which will also take anywhere between one and two weeks. 

During this phase, a cloud migration strategy or a combination is decided upon. Some of the well-known ones are as follows:

Rehosting—also known as life and shift. In this strategy, the on-premise workloads are moved to IaaS (infrastructure as a service) without making changes to the code. The migration strategy is quick but offers limited scalability and workload resilience. 

Replatforming – commonly known as lift, tinker, and shift. Herein, your existing workloads will be moved to the cloud without any change in the workload architecture. This one will offer you better fault tolerance, allow scaling, and deliver better performance. 

Refactoring—also known as re-architecting. This migration strategy will migrate your on-premise workloads to PaaS (platform as a service) by converting them into cloud-native (or as native as possible). It offers you a complete scope of cloud capabilities. 

Repurchasing, also known as drop and shop, completely replaces your on-premise workloads with a cloud software product (SaaS). It is a quick and low-risk cloud migration strategy. 

Selecting A Cloud Deployment Model

The next phase is all about the selection of the cloud deployment model. This phase takes about 3-5 days. During this, we will choose the appropriate cloud deployment model out of the following three:

Single Cloud Deployment 

Your workloads will be deployed in a single multi-tenant cloud environment. Opting for a single cloud always carries the risk of vendor lock-in. 

Multi-Cloud Deployment

Your workloads or parts of them are migrated to various public clouds. This approach helps you enjoy key advantages of the different public cloud service providers. What are those provider-specific advantages? One might offer better integration capabilities, the other might be more cost-effective, and the third might offer better speeds. 

Hybrid Cloud Deployment

This deployment approach uses a combination of public and private clouds. The workloads are migrated to the cloud while keeping their security requirements in mind. For example, sensitive workloads might be migrated onto the private cloud while others might be migrated onto the public cloud. 

Choosing Cloud Platform

The selection of the cloud platform takes about 2-8 weeks. You can choose either one or a combination of different cloud platforms. You can choose from a wide list of platforms, including the titans such as Azure or AWS, etc. 

During this phase, a proof-of-concept approach is also employed to assess the feasibility of the workloads being migrated. 

Planning & Designing Of Cloud Migration

The planning and design phase lasts for about 3-4 weeks. During this phase, a complete plan and design are crafted to ensure that your cloud migration happens seamlessly and covers all aspects. 

Cloud computing resource requirements are formulated to ensure that no redundant resources are purchased. A risk management plan is also crafted to mitigate various risks (compromised security, overpaying, etc.). 

ROI calculation and cloud migration cost assessment are also carried out. The team also established KPIs for cloud migration while identifying the refactoring, if needed, for workloads that will undergo migration. 

Automated cloud migration and the relevant tools are finalized before designing the architecture of the workloads that are to be migrated. Finally, a cloud migration plan is created that entails the priority and schedule of cloud migration. 

Cloud Migration

The migration to the cloud will take about 4-22 weeks. The activities performed during this phase include the following:

We will be creating a new production environment based on the redefined workload architecture. The data associated with the workloads will be migrated to the cloud. The data migration is run continuously throughout the process to ensure that the cloud database is synced. 

The workloads are migrated onto the cloud, and cloud monitoring tools are set up to ensure that you have visibility over your workloads. 

Testing & Optimization

The QA phase lasts 1-8 weeks, during which the performance of the migrated workloads is thoroughly tested and reviewed. The new environment is tested via penetration testing methodology. 

Furthermore, compliance testing is carried out. Technical audits are also run to identify any operational lapses. If the process, security, or workflow needs to be improved, the needed tasks are performed. 

Making The Switch From On-Premise To Cloud

Depending on the size of the workflows, this activity can be carried out in a single go or in steps (lasting 2-4 weeks). This is when the migration is completed, and you have to switch from on-premise workflows to cloud-based workflows. 

What is the cost of cloud migration?

The cost of cloud migration depends on various factors. It can cost anywhere between a few thousand dollars and hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is imperative to understand these factors before we discuss the cost of cloud migration in more detail. 

Data Transfer

Data transfer is an integral component of cloud migration. However, it is directly proportional to the size of the data being transferred. You should expect higher costs if the data volume is high. This amount can vary from one cloud service provider to another and is also dependent on the speed that’s being offered. 

Infrastructure Setup

A new cloud environment will incur costs for you. These costs include the cost of networking, storage, security measures, and virtual machines. The actual figure will depend on how custom you’re trying to make the cloud environment and the feature set you opt for. 

Post-Migration

There are going to be post-migration costs as well. These include maintenance, server fees, and ongoing optimization efforts. In addition, you might also be paying for managed services, updates, and any monitoring tools that are incorporated. 

Refactoring Applications

Some of your existing applications might have to be tweaked or completely developed from scratch to work in the cloud environment. Generally, this is a huge chunk of your cloud migration cost. The complexity of these applications and the migration strategy (more on that later) will determine the extent of this cost.

Factors affecting cloud migration costs

Different factors can play a role in determining the cloud migration costs. Some of them are discussed below:

Migration Strategy

We have already discussed that several migration strategies can be used when migrating to the cloud (refactor, replatform, rehost, etc). Your chosen strategy can significantly impact the cost of your migration project. As per AWS, there are seven different strategies that you can choose from:

• Retire
• Retain
• Relocate
• Rehost
• Repurchase
• Replatform
• Refactor

Each strategy has pros and cons and cost implications. The cost can be further divided into the initial investment and the long-term running cost. You’ll have to decide whether you’re willing to make the immediate investment or bear the long-term costs. 

Scale Of Migration

Similar to any other project, the level of complexity involved and the project’s size will directly affect the cost. If you’re a large organization with an intricate on-premise solution, migrating will be quite costly. 

However, migration may not cost much if you’re a smaller organization with basic-level solutions. A migration partner like Coding Crafts can help you easily determine the complexity level and the associated cost. 

Choice Of Cloud Service Provider

Last but not least, your choice of cloud service provider also greatly affects your migration costs. Each service provider, such as Azure, Google, AWS, etc., has different pricing plans and packages. 

You’ll have to compare them and make an informed decision. However, when making that decision, do factor in the short-term and long-term costs. We recommend factoring in discounts being offered, data transfer fees, storage costs, and instance pricing. 

Again, Coding Crafts can help you choose the right service provider and optimal plan based on your needs. 

What are the hidden costs of cloud migration?

As is the case with any project, there are hidden costs associated with cloud migration. Most cloud migration cost calculators won’t give you an insight into these costs, leading you into uncharted territories. But don’t worry; we’ve got you covered. 

Existing Systems & Integrations 

Most businesses tend to ignore this. Even with you migrating to the cloud, there are going to be some on-premise systems, right? Compatibility between on-premise solutions and cloud environments might require additional development work, leading to additional costs. 

Such integration challenges should be foreseen, and planning should be done around them to ensure no hidden costs arise. To ensure that there’s no integration lapse, you can either use middleware, APIs, or have something custom developed. 

Unexpected Downtime

We all know that downtime can severely impact your business operations, potentially increasing the overall cost. Downtime is a given during migration; therefore, its cost should be factored into the cloud migration budget. 

You can reduce downtime by meticulous planning and using the right migration partner, but it is still wise to factor in these disruptions when calculating the cloud migration cost. 

Overlap Of Services

As outlined earlier, during migration, there will be a phase during which you’ll use the cloud environment and the on-premise solutions. This happens when you’re migrating something to the cloud, but it needs to run for the sake of the business, so you run it on your on-premise solution. 

Another reason to consciously decide to run both environments is to ensure that everything remains in order if you have to roll back. Proper planning can reduce these costs, but they cannot be eliminated. Therefore, you should factor them into your cloud migration cost. 

Training & Change Management

Migrating to the cloud isn’t a straightforward change. You must conduct training sessions and employ change management to ensure seamless transfer. You must invest in proper training sessions and documentation of the new environment. There’s also the learning curve that might lead to reduced productivity. 

Factor in these costs when you’re preparing a budget to ensure that you have a realistic budget. 

Tips or strategies to control cloud migration costs 

The cost of moving to the cloud is not minor, by any account. However, there are different ways to keep them under control. 

Utilizing FinOps Practices

FinOps stands for cloud financial operations and involves analyzing cloud usage and making necessary adjustments. It helps maximize efficiency while reducing costs. 

We always recommend incorporating FinOps practices to better manage your cloud spending. It combines technology, finance, and tech teams to grow business while optimizing cloud costs. 

Thorough Planning And Assessment

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail! If you cannot thoroughly assess your existing applications and infrastructure, you will go over your budget. That’s why we always recommend starting with an initial assessment of existing workloads and workflows. 

By doing so, you can identify any potential hurdles that may pop up during cloud migration. Furthermore, it enables you to craft an accurate migration budget and plan. 

Finding The Right Migration Partner

We cannot stress this enough; if you don’t end up with the right migration partner, everything you do will count for nothing. When you partner with an experienced migration company, you will avoid costly mistakes and not only optimize your migration process but also complete it in a timely manner. 

Why? Veteran migration companies, such as Coding Crafts, have years of experience and can implement best practices and tools, streamlining the entire process.

Benefits of migrating to the cloud

Yes, cloud migration costs a significant amount. However, the benefits that cloud migration offers can help you not only break even on the initial investment but also make profits in the long term. 

Improved Flexibility and Efficiency

Nothing helps your organization achieve efficiency and flexibility like cloud environments. You can easily scale or implement performance improvements without having to invest heavily. 

Thanks to cloud environments, you will be able to adjust according to the demand and level of computing needed. You will also be enjoying quicker deployments of new services and applications. Furthermore, you will have access to the latest technologies, including but not limited to machine learning and artificial intelligence. 

Saving Money – Cloud Vs On-Premise Solutions

When you opt for a cloud environment, you sign up for indirect and direct cost savings. The direct savings come from reduced IT maintenance expenses, minimal infrastructure and hardware cost, and reduced energy consumption. 

The indirect savings (which are actually higher) come from enhanced productivity, reduced downtime, and the ability to bring new products to market quicker.

How coding crafts can help in cloud migration

Coding Crafts has helped hundreds of businesses migrate their workflows to the cloud. We understand that it is a nuanced project and have the expertise to handle it without hiccups. Our cloud engineers are pros of cloud migration and will help you minimize your costs throughout the project. 

Give us a call today and let’s get you started on your cloud migration journey!