Assess your own cloud readiness: Create a detailed roadmap for cloud migration

Updated April 2020.

The online Cloud Adoption Readiness Tool (CART) is a self-guided checklist to gauge your level of preparedness for a smooth transition to the cloud. The tool is now available in English, German, French, French (Canada), Spanish, Italian, Bahasa Indonesian, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese.

Driven by the need for greater productivity and lower costs, organizations around the world are moving their workloads to the cloud. Pre-migration planning can be as important as the implementation work itself. A cloud readiness assessment can transform an organization’s rough idea of moving to the cloud into a detailed plan that explains how to make it happen and in what order events should occur.

Here are seven tips for a successful cloud migration:

1. Have a solid business case for cloud migration: Cloud migrations make sense when they offer a tangible benefit your organization. Outline your current objectives and decide how cloud will benefit them. List out the pros and cons and how the success of your cloud transition strategy will be measured.
2. Categorize your workloads and desired outcomes: As you categorize your workloads and desired strategic outcomes, map the capabilities of your targeted cloud service provider. Does your cloud provider have the breadth of cloud services you need? Do they have the security, disaster recovery, and business continuity capabilities or SLAs you require? Do they have a professional services team to support you in planning, migration, deployment, and post-implementation? What does their partner and independent software vendor (ISV) community look like?
3. Establish a cloud operating model: A cloud operating model outlines how the cloud will transform your current workflows, internal processes, and operations. It should be based on your organization’s strategic objectives for migration and define how your organization will function after the migration is accomplished. It should account for everything that will be transformed by successfully adopting the cloud.
4. Estimate timeline and budgets: By using AWS Professional Services, you will receive a more accurate timeline and budget estimate before the project kicks in.
5. Prioritize what application to move first: It is rare for organizations to move everything to the cloud at once. Conduct a strategic portfolio analysis to determine what applications or workloads to move first.
6. Test adequately: Pay attention to the design and testing of your cloud architecture and the migration of data. Have a disaster recovery plan in place prior to initiating a migration.
7. Emphasize the importance of security: Cloud security is a shared responsibility between the customer and cloud service provider. Work with your cloud provider to create complete and robust security policies for success post-migration.

As more organizations see the value of the cloud’s agility and elasticity, these tools can offer a strong foundation. There are several tools, guides, and frameworks that helps make the pre-migration planning as effective as the migration itself. To ensure you migration is proactively cost optimized, be sure to review our new AWS Cloud Cost Optimization Center to download the eBook and view the webinars. Other AWS migration tools and assets include the Migration Acceleration Program, Migration Hub, and the AWS Well-Architected Program.

Cloud migrations can be challenging; supplementing your team with specialized skills and experience can help you achieve those results. The AWS Professional Services organization is a global team of experts that can help you realize your desired business outcomes when using the AWS Cloud. We work together with your team and your chosen member of the AWS Partner Network (APN) to execute your enterprise cloud computing initiatives.

For more information, please visit our migration and public sector cloud webpages, and contact us.

Subscribe to the AWS Public Sector Blog newsletter to get the latest in AWS tools, solutions, and innovations from the public sector delivered to your inbox, or contact us.