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11 Jun 2024

Step-by-Step Guide to Multi-Cloud Migration

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Sharon Duchin
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Table of Contents

Cloud computing has become critical for companies worldwide. It offers fundamental online services, including data storage, telephony, communication, CRM tools, backup, collaboration, and communication. 

Cloud computing comes in various formats: Public clouds, private clouds, hybrid clouds, and multi-cloud environments. Cloud computing has also hugely helped remote teams perform and communicate internationally. 

Nevertheless, to get the best out of cloud software—you should ensure smooth multi-cloud migration. 

In this article, we’ll break down the importance of multi-cloud migration and how to ensure smooth migration: 

Why Teridion?

With expertise in optimizing network performance for multi-cloud environments, Teridon can prevent the challenges your organization may face during migration. 

Types of Cloud Platforms

Although cloud computing can help your company by offering flexibility and scalability, selecting the most suitable cloud platform is fundamental. 

Here are the main options: 

  • Private Cloud: Provides reliable infrastructure for single organizations by guaranteeing control and privacy over data.
  • Public Cloud: Offers services over the internet provided by third-party vendors, enabling scalability and accessibility.
  • Hybrid Cloud: Integrates on-premises infrastructure with cloud services, allowing organizations to leverage the benefits of both environments.
  • Multi-Cloud: Involves utilizing services from multiple cloud providers, helping organizations optimize performance, enhance security, and mitigate risks.

 

In addition, there are three types of cloud computing services:

  • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Provides readily available computer storage and network resources that scale according to demand.
  • Platforms as a Service (PaaS): Delivers software development and deployment resources.
  • Software as a Service (SaaS): Provides software distribution straight to end users.

Multi-Cloud Migration vs. Single-Cloud Migration

Multi-cloud migration differs from single-cloud migration and hybrid models because it distributes workloads across multiple cloud providers. 

Although single-cloud migration moves all workloads to a single provider—multi-cloud migration is flexible and utilizes the strengths of different providers. As a result, it avoids vendor lock-in and improves resilience. 

Meanwhile, hybrid models combine on-premises infrastructure with cloud services to provide versatility. That said, there are possible integration challenges.

How is Multi-Cloud Migration Different from a Hybrid Model?

It’s vital to know the main differences between a multi-cloud migration and a hybrid model. Here are the differences: 

Multi-Cloud Migration 

Multi-cloud migration offers the strategic distribution of workloads, applications, and data across numerous cloud providers.

  • Flexibility and redundancy: Multi-cloud migration lets you leverage the strengths of different cloud providers. 
  • Optimization of services: Multi-cloud migration lets your organization optimize services based on cost, performance, geographic location, and specialized features. 
  • Avoid vendor lock-in: Multi-cloud migration can stop vendor lock-in by preventing dependency on a single cloud provider. 

However, although multi-cloud migration offers flexibility and resilience—it may also generate management, integration, and interoperability issues. 

Hybrid Model

A hybrid cloud model combines on-premises infrastructure with cloud services. This allows your organization to receive the benefits of both environments.

  • Integration of on-premises and cloud resources: In a hybrid model, you can maintain some resources on-premises while utilizing cloud services for others. This enables control over sensitive data. 
  • Flexibility and scalability: The hybrid model offers flexibility and scalability, allowing you to scale resources as required.
  • Portability: Another hybrid model advantage is moving data and applications between on-premises and cloud environments. 

Although the hybrid model offers huge flexibility, it also presents integration, data consistency, and management challenges. 

The Benefits of Multi-Cloud Migration

Low Latency

Distributing workloads across various cloud computing providers can reduce latency when configured optimally through good peering agreements and using the right network infrastructure. In turn, this improves application performance and responsiveness across diverse locations.

Low latency also improves real-time communication, optimizes workflows, and enables faster downloads. 

Enhanced Security

Multi-cloud strategies increase security through redundancy and diversified security measures. As a result, this mitigates data breaches, reduces cyber threats, and expands data encryption. 

Improved security is also essential for complying with GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS regulations. 

Efficient Data Management

Multi-cloud solutions can optimize data placement and accessibility. As such, this streamlines data management processes and boosts operational efficiency, saving you time and resources. 

Scalability and Flexibility

Multi-cloud environments can also help your organization scale resources in reaction to fluctuating demands. Whether experiencing spikes in workload or planning for long-term growth, multi-cloud architectures can satisfy varying business requirements.

Risk Mitigation and Business Continuity

You can mitigate risks linked with service outages, data loss, or provider downtime with multi-cloud migration. This approach also improves disaster recovery capabilities. 

For example, it ensures uninterrupted business operations and maintains business continuity—regardless of unforeseen interruptions. 

Cost Optimization and Resource Efficiency

Multi-cloud migration saves money by optimizing resource allocation and adopting flexible cost structures. It combines the strengths of different providers and provides the best of all worlds. 

Vendor Lock-In Avoidance

Being locked into one cloud vendor can be challenging. However, leveraging multiple cloud providers allows your business to bypass vendor lock-in and maintain control of cloud environments. 

It also enables you to change providers seamlessly without being tied to contractual obligations.

Common Challenges of Multi-Cloud Migration

Despite the advantages, there are many challenges to multi-cloud migration, especially if you haven’t set it up properly. 

Here are the most common:

Interoperability and Compatibility Issues

One of the most significant problems caused by multi-cloud migration is compatibility issues between cloud providers. Each cloud provider has different APIs, services, and management tools. 

As a result, that makes it complicated to integrate and orchestrate workloads, leading to integration complexities, data silos, and increased overhead management. 

Security Issues 

Security issues are a concern when operating a multi-cloud environment. It can also be complicated to ensure consistent security policies, access controls, and data protection mechanisms with multi-cloud migration. 

Management Complexities and Skill Gaps

Companies often encounter skills gaps and resource constraints when managing diverse cloud platforms. 

Multiple cloud environments introduce complexities in terms of performance optimization and configuration management. Therefore, a skilled workforce is essential to avoid significant issues. 

Maintaining Consistent Performance

Another major issue of multi-cloud migration is maintaining regular performance. Variations in network latency as a result of poor peering agreements or infrastructure, reliability across different cloud providers, and resource availability can all harm performance. 

That’s why your network infrastructure requires constant maintenance. 

Crucial Steps of a Successful Multi-Cloud Migration

Successful multi-cloud adoption requires careful planning, a systematic approach, and strategic decision-making. 

Here are the steps to success: 

Assess Current Infrastructure and Workload 

The first step is to assess your organization’s current infrastructure and workload. You must analyze existing applications, data, and IT systems to identify dependencies, performance requirements, and compatibility with cloud environments. 

In turn, you can develop a clear roadmap for migration and prioritize workloads based on needs. 

Define Migration Goals and Cloud KPIs

Once you’ve assessed your current infrastructure, you should define your KPIs and clear migration goals. 

These goals should align with your business strategy and include critical objectives, such as scalability, enhancing performance, reducing costs, and achieving regulatory compliance. 

The KPIs should also be measurable and based on uptime, response times, and cost savings 

Determine Your Budget/Costs 

Keeping costs low is essential for any organization. However, using multiple cloud providers can also be expensive due to the upfront migration costs because of data transfer fees, consulting fees, ongoing operational costs, etc. 

If you consider your budget beforehand, you can avoid unexpected cost overruns to ensure financial viability. 

Choose Multi-Cloud Providers 

Selecting the right multi-cloud providers is an important decision. You must consider performance, reliability, security, compliance capabilities, and geographic availability. 

In addition, you should involve a diverse section of personnel groups who will utilize or make decisions regarding the proposed multi-cloud providers based on business needs. 

Create a Proper Data Migration Plan

A comprehensive data migration plan, outlining the steps, strategies, and best practices for migrating data, is essential. 

Here are the key components:

  • Determine automation strategy: You should assess the feasibility of automation in the data migration process. This may identify opportunities to automate repetitive tasks like data extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL). 
  • Ensure compliance regulations: Verifying that all data migration complies with industry regulations, compliance requirements, and data protection laws is fundamental. 
  • Factor in disaster recovery: Data resilience is paramount for ensuring business continuity. That’s why developing robust backup and recovery strategies is essential. 
  • Ensure seamless application integration: It’s important to plan for seamless application integration across multiple cloud environments. To achieve this, define clear integration strategies and collaboration between applications. 

Migrate Applications and Data to the Chosen Cloud Environments

After you’ve put the data migration plan in place, you should start executing the migration progress. Here’s how: 

  • Assessment and planning: Undergo a complete assessment of applications and data to be migrated, such as dependencies, compatibility with cloud environments, and performance requirements. 
  • Data preprocessing and preparation: Prepare for data migration by cleansing, transforming, and formatting it to the cloud’s preferred specifications. 
  • Data migration execution: It’s important to execute the data migration plan according to the predefined plan. 
  • Application migration: Migrating applications to the chosen cloud environments is the next step. Therefore, ensure you’ve configured the applications properly. 
  • User acceptance training: It’s essential to conduct thorough user acceptance testing (UAT) to validate the performance and usability of migrated applications and data. 

Monitoring, Optimization, and Performance Tuning

Once you’ve completed the migration process, ongoing monitoring, optimization, and performance tuning are required to achieve good results. 

Here are some things to consider:

  • Continuous monitoring: You should execute robust monitoring and altering mechanisms to track performance metrics and service availability. 
  • Optimization strategies: You’ll also continuously optimize cloud resources to boost performance. 
  • Performance tuning: It’s also critical that you identify and address bottlenecks and latency issues. 
  • Capacity planning: You should forecast future resource requirements and capacity planning to ensure cloud resources can scale effectively. 

Terdion’s Role in Multi-Cloud Migration

One of the most significant aspects of multi-cloud migration is network performance. If your network infrastructure is performing poorly, multi-cloud migration becomes problematic. 

But that’s where Teridon can help. With expertise in optimizing network performance for multi-cloud environments, Teridon can prevent the challenges your organization may face during migration. 

Teridion is the only Network as a Service with a global backbone that connects 25 global cloud providers  in over 500 points of presence. That means Teridion always finds the most optimal path between any two points on the internet, and can select the path with lowest latency regardless of cloud vendor. Working with more cloud providers increases the pool of routing options which Teridion offers.

Check these case studies to learn how Teridion can optimize your network performance for effective multi-cloud migration. 

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Sharon Duchin

Head of Marketing

Sharon Duchin is the Head of Marketing at Terdion. Prior to joining Teridion she was the CMO of several startups, as well as a Business Unit Manager at Keter Plastic and a Marketing Manager at General Mills USA. Sharon Holds an MBA from Chicago Booth and a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Economics from the Hebrew University.
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