Use the PLAN Methodology for Cloud Migration Planning

Proper cloud migration planning is the key to securely and successfully transfer data between two cloud platforms, and there are no two ways about it. However, the planning process can be highly challenging due to the technicalities of migration involved and the unforeseen roadblocks that may arise in the transition journey.

And the multitude of factors and parameters to consider can make it more complex for your IT team to frame a structured cloud migration project plan. To make the planning process hassle-free for your company, we have created a lightweight framework (we’ve named it PLAN) that is simple to understand and implement.

Your IT team can also make modifications to this framework and adopt it as per your organization’s migration use case.

P: Pre-Migration Analysis for SOW Planning

It is always best to start the cloud migration planning process by performing an in-depth analysis of the source cloud during the pre-migration stage. This way, your IT team can get clarity on various critical aspects, such as:

• Admin roles and privileges
• Sharing permissions and access levels
• User hierarchies and folder structures
• Collaboration with internal teams and external collaborators
• Integration with other native apps and third-party apps

With clarity on all areas, your IT team can granularly plan the scope of work by taking several strategic decisions, such as:

• The total number of user accounts to migrate
• The types and sizes of data to migrate
• Whether to end source cloud licenses or archive them post-migration
• Whether to skip certain data and user accounts and archive them
• Metadata and other features to preserve
• The number of file versions to retain
• The approaches to take for overcoming target cloud limitations
• The number of delta migrations to perform for transferring incremental changes

Equally important is to perform a deep pre-migration analysis of the destination cloud and ensure apt preparedness. For example, when migrating to the Microsoft 365 cloud suite, it is crucial to ensure that the user accounts are pre-provisioned before migrating source cloud data to them.

L: Low-Impact Transition with User Batch Segregation

Migrating all the user accounts and data in a single go raises a lot of risks around performance downtime and security. A low-impact strategy that we suggest to all our customers is to segregate the total number of users into several batches and migrate them in sequence.
With smaller manageable batches, you can mitigate several risks, such as:

• Inaccuracies in CSV mapping
• API rate throttling
• Inaccuracies in post-migration validation

This lightweight cloud migration planning approach makes it hassle-free for your IT team to transition the users to the target cloud platform without significantly impacting their everyday workflow and overall operational efficiency in the company.

We have discussed more about user batch segregation in our phased cloud office migration guide. Explore it to deep dive into this concept.

A: Application Interoperability for Temporary Co-existence

Interoperation of the applications integrated into the source cloud is an area many businesses overlook when devising a cloud migration project plan. By maintaining interoperability between critical communication platforms, such as email and chat messaging, your IT team can:

• Maintain co-existence between the internal users and external collaborators during the migration
• Ensure continuity in the overall company-wide operations during the transition

Explore more on migration interoperability and co-existence through our guide and take informed decisions to plan the interoperability process for your company’s overall migration plan.

N: Norm Compliance for Security and Legalities

During the cloud migration planning stage, it is highly important that your company adheres to all the industry norms, best practices, security regulations and legal compliances. The migration processes that your IT team plans with the migration partner must follow industry-standard practices, such as:

• Implementing token-based approaches for cloud authentication, e.g., OAuth 2.0
• Perform the read and write actions through the REST APIs
• Encrypting the data in transit through RSA-2048 and/or other industry-standard encryption protocols

Also, it is a must that the migration solution complies with the security regulations that your company and the country your company is based out of requires. At CloudFuze, we adhere to all the industry-standard security regulations, including GDPR, SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, and more. Read more about our security.