Application Migration Simplified: How to Optimize Data for the Cloud

Organizations over the years have seen the writing on the wall: The future is cloud. Now, these companies and their DevOps teams areevolving, innovating, and pursuing new technologies, to gain a competitive edge and create new efficiencies. One of the ways they’re doing this is through application migration to cloud. 

In this blog, I’ll detail the nuances of application migration and how to best manage data during it, including various challenges and their solutions. By the end, you will have the necessary understanding and strategies to skillfully handle data during your application migration to cloud. 

What is Application Migration? 

Application migration is when an organization transitions their application to a new platform like Azure. This could be an innovative transition from on-premises to cloud, but it could also mean from one cloud platform to another, such as from AWS to Azure.  

Why Do Organizations Migrate Applications? 

When companies pursue an application migration, they hope to gain: 

• More cost savings. 
• Increased security. 
• Greater storage capacity. 
• Improved scalability for when the organization grows. 
• Better user experience for those using the application. 
• Access to cloud environments virtually anywhere they need. 
• Faster application development and deployment. 

Strategies for Application Migration 

There are a few different strategies for approaching an application migration: 

• Lift and Shift: Also known as rehosting, this strategy migrates an exact copy of an application or workload from on-premises to cloud. This does not include an app redesign. 
• Relocating: There’s no need to buy new hardware if you are simply relocating from on-premises to a cloud version of the same platform. This strategy helps limit disruption and decrease downtime. 
• Replatforming: Similar in execution to lift and shift/rehosting, relocation includes minor code changes to help the application’stransition to cloud technology. 
• Rearchitecting: This strategy is essentially revamping your current architecture to adapt to new, modern computing concepts, so that it is fit for cloud.  

Above all, no matter which approach you take, planning ahead is one of the best practices for cloud application migration strategy. That way, you can prepare and better address the pain points and challenges that come with the transition.  

Challenges of Application Migration to Cloud 

Every migration to cloud has its growing pains. Companies often aren’t used to the application they’re moving to, and there’s no guarantee the application is going to work exactly how they want. It takes time to adjust and adapt.  

During this process, I’ve seen a variety of application migration-related challenges: 

Service Interruptions 

Applications often need to go offline during a migration, resulting in lack of service and revenue. The amount of service interruptions depends on your application migration strategy — some entail more downtime than others. 

Integration Problems 

Applications need time to fit into their new environment. You might need to address differences between your operating systems and dependencies, which cause delays and pain points for your teams. 

Performance Issues 

I know cloud providers always like to tell you these platforms will perform well, but there’s no guarantee that everything will work smoothly right off the bat. You might see slower response times or efficiency issues after you migrate to a new environment. 

Slower Data Provisioning for Non-Production 

When you move an application to cloud, it will change how you get data to non-production environments. Your data provisioning may slow down, until the new application platform is effectively integrated and settled into your workflow. 

Data Loss Concerns 

Sometimes, when moving data, you risk the chance of losing that data. This can be due to hardware failures, network interruptions during transfer, or corruption when data isn’t properly formatted. 

Data Security & Compliance Risk 

Transferring data from one application to another can make you vulnerable to breaches, attacks, and exposure. If sensitive, personally identifiable data is compromised, you can face reputational damage, regulatory fines, and possible lawsuits. 

How Can YOU Be a Cloud-Driven Enterprise? 

Balancing cloud and on-premises data can be difficult as you work toward cloud transformation. In this webinar, my Perforce Delphix colleagues Daniel Stolf and Nick Mathison lay out a roadmap for navigating this challenge while minimizing costs and accelerating development speeds. 

How Perforce Delphix Helps You Navigate Application Migration 

While Perforce Delphix doesn’t assist with an application migration itself, we have the tools that will help you preserve your data during the transition. Our capabilities will easily integrate into your workflow, no matter the platform, so you can move data easier while maintaining data compliance, quality, and velocity. 

When you migrate data from on-premises to the cloud, Delphix can support data integrity and simplify the transition of the data in a few different ways: 

Supporting Data Transfer and Testing 

When transferring data from one platform to the cloud, you must open ports in the firewall. But when using Delphix, you only need to open one. Delphix is able to compresses the entire dataset down to one third of its original size, and send the data more easily through that port and to the cloud. 

As an added layer, you can make copies to rehearse the migration with Delphix before you transfer your real data. You can create lightweight copies of your data to send over and test if the migration works — without risk. 

Ensuring Data Compliance 

During an application migration to cloud, data privacy becomes a risk. As you’re moving data from one platform to another, it becomes vulnerable to attacks and data theft. Masking that data before it’s moved over will ensure that sensitive data is not compromised, and you’ll be able to transfer that data without worry of noncompliance. 

Delta Dental faced a similar dilemma of how to move data to cloud. The holding company for the U.S.’s largest dental benefits system needed to migrate data, but its traditional approach would take eight weeks to complete. Plus, as an organization subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Delta Dental needed to keep personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI) secure. The transfer to cloud would pose a great risk. 

Delphix helped Delta Dental maintain a hybrid cloud architecture by collecting the production data, masking it, and replicating it in the cloud environment. This reduced the time it took to move data to cloud environments from eight weeks to mere hours, with the added layer of masking protection. Delta Dental also accelerated its migration timeline by 20%, as a result. 

Improving Data Velocity 

As I mentioned, data provisioning for non-production environments may become difficult after an application migration. Since Delphixintegrates with a multitude of platforms, our data virtualization capabilities easily transfer over to cloud. You’ll have the agility to spin off quick virtual copies when and where you need them, and Delphix enables you to bookmark and return to prior versions of your data.  

Take our work with Alberta Blue Cross, for example. The benefits carrier wanted to rebuild its administration application and move to an Oracle database-centric application — a lengthy, multi-year process. After replacing the legacy system, Alberta Blue Cross struggled with database refresh wait times as well as server, storage, software licensing, and administrative costs.  

Delphix was able to quickly deliver data to sandbox environments for teams to use during the changeover. With these environments, the Alberta Blue Cross smoothed its transition, and its teams saw reduced refresh times, going from one or two days down to minutes.