How to Migrate and Modernize Your Apps and Web Services with Microsoft Azure

Many enterprises are working to align their IT initiatives and have made cloud an integral part of the strategy. To achieve maximum results, the applications and databases should ideally run on a modern cloud infrastructure like Microsoft Azure. In this article, we explain what a modern cloud infrastructure is and our migration methodology to ensure a smooth and successful cloud implementation.

So, what’s a modern cloud infrastructure?

• Dynamic provisioning of computing resources with a few mouse clicks
• Regularly upgraded hardware with an agile architecture to meet not only today’s but also tomorrow’s needs
• Best-in-class security
• Flexible pricing models

Why Microsoft Azure?

• Scale: Global businesses or a high transaction business from a particular geography, can count on Azure to scale with elasticity to match their changing requirements.
• Speed & Ease: Enterprises are able to leverage the “infinite” computing power of the cloud with a few clicks and offer the best experience to users.
• Performance: Microsoft Azure runs a worldwide network of datacenters and regularly upgrades the hardware to ensure reduced latency and better performance.
• Security: Protecting data, apps and infrastructure is a top priority for enterprises. Azure offers the right set of policies, controls, and technologies to ensure a secure environment.
• Reliability: Customers can be assured of High Availability & Disaster Recovery at an affordable cost as data can be mirrored within the cloud infrastructure.

Overall Migration Approach:

Microsoft Azure’s Web Apps and its tools have made it simple for enterprises to migrate their websites and applications with ease. To further expedite the process, we recommend the following approach:

1. Migration Strategy & Methodology

1. Analyze your priorities:
   • What triggered this request for migration?
   • What is the business outcome expected?
   • Work-load priorities
   • Total Cost of Ownership
2. Choosing the right option:
   • X as a Service (X-aaS): Based on the business goals, the enterprise team must select between Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
   • While IaaS provides virtualized hardware, PaaS offers the organizations a cloud platform to run their apps and databases on the most modern hardware
3. Cross-functional teams (CFT):
   • For a smooth execution, stakeholders from Finance, Business and IT must come together to form this CFT

2. App Migration Approach

1. Step 1: Analysis & Strategy
   • Understand the customer’s business requirement, outcome, and applications’ role
   • Understanding the apps’ performance, architecture in the current environment (on-premise)
   • Understanding the data flow (input & output and interdependencies)
   • Choosing the right service (Infra or Platform as a service)
   • Selecting the right cloud computing plan, including the database & storage
2. Step 2: App Migration
   • Pre-migration checklist and sign-off
   • Prepping the app to be compatible with Azure
   • Porting and migration of app to Azure
3. Step 3: Storage Migration
   • Pre-migration checklist of current databases (DB) and sign-off
   • Prepping the databases to be compatible with Azure
   • Migration of SQL or other DBs to Azure Store

3. Manage, Secure & Scale

After migration, for the best performance we recommend enterprises utilize tools like Azure Arc, Azure Security center.

1. Manage: Azure Arc helps you manage workloads across multiple environments. This enables the admins to monitor the performance in real-time.
2. Secure:Detect and respond to threats across your work environment with full visibility using Azure Security Center and Azure Sentinel.
3. Scale:Constantly analyze workloads and, based on the performance matrix, choose the right mix of standard and custom policies to govern and scale the cloud environment. This will not only ensure high availability but also offer the best experience.

Whether you’re planning to move to a public, private, or hybrid cloud, we have the talent, experience, and partnerships required for success. Contact us to get started: info@msrcosmos.com or call +1 925 399 4218.