Efficient Cloud Migration for Public Institutions

Digital transformation is no longer an option for the public sector but a necessity. Addressing the increasing demands for efficiency, flexibility, and security can be addressed by migrating applications to the cloud. Cloud technologies not only offer long-term cost benefits but also the opportunity to offer innovative administrative services faster and more targeted. But how does a successful migration succeed? 

In this article, we examine which properties of your applications you should examine closely and how you can derive the right migration strategy from them.

Before migrating applications to the cloud, a functional basis should be developed on the new platform. Governance, identity, security, networking, processes, and data protection must be regulated. The move to the cloud is the perfect time to optimize existing concepts and remove legacy issues. In addition, the basic architecture of the environment should be implemented with corresponding landing zones. Particular attention should be paid to hybrid use cases for the migration phase and future operation. Security and identity must be considered across the boundaries of the individual platforms.

In the course of the migration, individual applications should first be analyzed. The assessment serves as the basis for the migration process. Information about the following properties of the apps should be collected:

• Cloud readiness: Cloud readiness measures the effort required to migrate an application to the cloud. Applications that can be migrated to the cloud without customization are ideal for quick first successes. These migration projects can quickly leverage cloud benefits such as suitable rightsizing, scalability or the automation capability of the cloud.
• Criticality: Critical applications are those whose failure seriously affects the organization. After migration, they can benefit from platform functionalities such as geo-redundancy, the integrity of the hyperscaler architecture, and platform resilience.
• Complexity: Complex systems have various highly integrated components and applications, different databases, or work with various technologies.
• Cohesion: Systems with high cohesion have many existing integrations with other systems. Applications with many dependencies on other systems pose particular challenges. Coordinated migration is essential here to ensure the integrity of the entire system landscape.
• Upcoming investment: Applications for which a major investment is planned for technical or strategic reasons should be supplemented by the aspect of cloud migration. This optimizes the functional scope and cloud benefits in one step.
• Functional context: Applications with future requirements based on the implemented business processes that can be better implemented in the cloud. For example, specialist processes that will require various integrations in the future can benefit from specific cloud services such as an ESB.
• Technological aspects: All aspects of the technologies used should be collected as part of the assessment. The versions, as well as support and security cycles, should also be analyzed in detail.

Of course, the selection of these properties is not exhaustive. It is essential to examine the application from a strategic and technical perspective constantly is necessary.

After the app assessments have been carried out, the migration of the individual applications is planned in waves. Waves are seen as groups of applications that are migrated to the cloud in a specific order. The waves can be formed using different methods. The first waves are often formed based on priorities. For example, applications with outdated components or security risks or represent easily implementable improvements are placed in the first waves. It can also make sense to assign applications with a high level of complexity to early waves to allow sufficient time.

After planning the migration waves, the cloud move is planned in detail. The migration strategy is derived based on the organization's business objectives and the assessment results. The following alternatives are then available for the practical cloud move. The procedure and the target architecture are set out in a cloudification concept.

1. Rehost: This strategy, also known as "lift-and-shift", moves applications directly to the cloud without any changes. This strategy is cost-effective and can be implemented quickly, but it is particularly suitable for systems in which no adjustments are possible or are already cloud-ready. You should consider whether the application is stable and operational requirements can be met. This is because a lift-and-shift migration minimizes investment costs and has a low migration risk. The Delos Cloud provides possible target systems with many different virtual machines.
2. Refactor: The refactor strategy is a more sophisticated strategy. Here, the smallest code and configuration changes are made to enable the use of cloud services such as PostgreSQL as a PaaS service. This allows IT decision-makers to increase efficiency with few changes and take advantage of the initial benefits of the cloud, such as PaaS.
3. Revise: This strategy involves adapting the source code to enable cloud-native services. Entra could be integrated as an identity provider, or scalability could be achieved by implementing a stateless model.
4. Rebuild: The most complex, but also the most sustainable strategy is to rebuild the application completely. This can be a long-term project and is suitable for systems with high strategic value. However, a rebuild can also make sense for outdated systems. By developing a new system, it is possible to implement tailor-made processes and implement modern approaches such as an event-based architecture. This approach is particularly suitable for leveraging many cloud benefits.
5. Replace: The last alternative is the replace strategy. This involves migrating business processes to SaaS applications. Support processes are often outsourced. Using external services in a subscription model avoids the investment costs of implementing a method. Replacement requires a careful analysis of the potential services. In particular, a detailed analysis of the provider's IT security and data protection processes should be carried out.