The stages of a cloud transformation – and what not to forget

Let’s jump into some definition-gymnastics.

We often tell our customers that we don’t do cloud migration. We do cloud transformation.

The difference?

Most of our customers are smart enough to spot the benefits of one over the other.

When this migration is executed without any prior changes to the digital estate, it’s a lift-and-shift migration.

Some consider this a simple way of executing a cloud migration. In our modest opinion, it’s the opposite. It’s a certain way of complicating your IT.

And although there are several advanced services that support a well-executed and intelligent journey to the cloud (we humbly provide one of those), some organizations still choose to do this simple migration, where they move everything within their digital estate to the cloud. Without thinking twice. Sigh.

When organizations move the entire digital estate to the cloud in a headless lift-and-shift, they always bring a lot of stuff that they don’t need anymore. Shadow IT. Zombie servers.

You would be surprised how much unused IT is left lying around in the shadows of most IT infrastructures.

We find that up to 5% of servers are no longer in use and can be decommissioned. No need to move that to the cloud. And pay a good load of money to store it there. Obviously.

Moving everything without prior assessment and optimization never pays off. You’re just pushing the problems in front of you. Your future self will slap your forehead.

All we say is this.

Want to move your IT to the cloud? Go for it. Just make sure to map out what you have first.

Do an automated mapping of your IT infrastructure. Know what you have.

Now, clean it up before you move anything.

Dust off those servers. Eye out what is no longer in use. Get rid of that.

Really, what we’ve added to the conventional method of cloud migration, is the option for you to improve your IT.

Since you are transforming your IT by moving to the cloud anyway, take this opportunity to improve it.

Full disclaimer: Mugato is not a tool for executing the cloud migration itself. Our main thing is giving you the full overview of your entire digital estate, help you optimize it to make sure it reaches the cloud in its best shape, and maintain the overview of your IT afterward.

As for the migration itself, Mugato will help monitor the process and visualize the ongoing cloud migration, so you can ensure that everything is going according to plan.

Importantly, once you’ve moved to the cloud, Mugato ensures continuous monitoring. So that your IT is managed based on facts about your digital estate. An always updated view of your IT.

We call this a continuous approach to cloud transformation. You can call it whatever you want. As long as you remember both the before and after of the actual migration, instead of just throwing all of your assets in the cloud.

In Mugato, we work with these four stages of a cloud transformation process:

Discover, plan, improve, and monitor.

This is how we work in Mugato. Of course, there are other models and frameworks for the cloud migration process. No matter what you choose, we recommend that you go for a tool or service that is with you all the way. From preparation and planning to beyond the cloud migration itself.