On-premise hosting is the traditional type of server hosting where a company has its own physical servers in a data center that it runs, manages, and maintains. Cloud hosting is where companies leverage a third-party cloud service provider (CSP) such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud.
Given the complexity and variety of on-premise infrastructure, there are several factors you need to consider, including what benefits you are looking for, the type of migration your company needs, and the migration approach that will set you up for long-term success.
With cloud hosting you rely on the CSP to keep the hardware up to date and are guaranteed performance and uptime. Your services are no longer bound to a physical location and CSPs enable fast, equal access to teams around the world. By having data centers in worldwide locations, CSPs reduce latency and offer additional features like mirroring and backups to ensure your data is always available where you need it.
Most CSPs offer auto-scaling, which allows you to scale your resources up and down depending on business needs. And, of course, you also have the ability to make custom changes quickly. If you have a business with anticipated surges or rapid growth, you can leverage a CSP to get scalability without having to manage the addition of new servers and software licenses.
CSPs offer high security environments that are compliant with many industry standards and government regulations, such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). They offer cloud-native security features and tooling that your company may not have the resources to make or run on-premises. Top tier CSPs are heavily invested in keeping their security and compliance measures up to date to ensure success for all of their customers.
When your systems are all in the cloud, you no longer have to worry about the upkeep and expense of physical servers. This is especially helpful if you have growing or unpredictable demand, where supporting those fluctuations would require additional hardware or leave some hardware underutilized. You only pay for what you need. You also save on staffing costs and can redirect those individuals to more valuable projects.
There are several types of cloud migration, depending on what your starting and ending environments look like.
There are four main types of cloud migration: rehosting, replatforming, refactoring, and replacing.
Rehosting – also known as lift & shift – is when you move your applications and services to the cloud without making any significant changes. While this is the most straightforward type of on-premises to cloud migration, it can become complicated or even blocked if your existing applications are not compatible with running in the cloud.
Replatforming involves partially changing your application to allow it to run more effectively in the cloud. As an example, you may have a frontend application that is designed in a way that migrates easily to the cloud, but a backend system that doesn’t. Replatforming would involve rewriting the way the application talks to the backend database. A benefit of this approach is that the migration to the cloud will not be as big of a change for your frontend users.
Refactoring is a more significant redesign of your systems and applications. In some cases, this work must be done pre-migration in order to make the applications compatible with the new cloud environment, but often you can migrate first and then quickly shift focus to replacing applications and services with their redesigned versions. While not always necessary, often your systems and tools will run better once they are updated to be cloud-native and they will be easier to maintain long-term.
Replacing is an alternative to refactoring where, instead of rewriting your applications to run in the cloud, you adopt third party solutions as part of your migration strategy. This can be a good approach if you don’t have the resources to maintain your internal tools or if there are newer SaaS products that could meet your needs at a lower cost.
The steps for cloud migration typically include:
It’s important to note that the specific steps and considerations involved in cloud migration can vary greatly depending on factors such as your current infrastructure, applications, data, and business requirements, as well as the destination cloud environment you’re migrating to.
Therefore, it’s essential to have knowledgeable staff on hand or to consult with a managed cloud provider who can offer expertise and guidance tailored to your specific migration needs and goals.
You can save even more by moving to a managed cloud hosting solution – in terms of cost, staffing, and peace of mind. Rather than training or hiring IT staff to manage your new cloud instances, a managed service provides a ready-to-go team of experts that can advise and assist you before, during, and after migration.
A managed service that has helped many customers migrate will be able to help you estimate and manage costs more accurately and plan for long term growth based on your requirements. They also add an additional layer of security and reliability, without your team needing to invest in its own 24×7 monitoring and regular backups.
Assembla is one of the leading providers of cloud-based Perforce, SVN, and Git. With our industry expertise and dedicated DevOps teams, we can help you save costs and improve performance without sacrificing security. We will help you plan and execute your cloud migration and monitor and support your instances going forward so that you can focus on building great products. For an intro to our migration process, check out our Guide to Enterprise Source Code Migration with Assembla.
To try out Perforce, Subversion, or Git in the cloud, sign up for a two-week free trial.If you’re ready to talk to our experts about how we can help you migrate from on-premises to the cloud, request a Subversion or Perforce quote to start the conversation.
