First step to Azure. FastTrack for Azure: architecture and financial analysis for Azure Cloud migration 

    Whether your organisation plans to proceed with migration to Azure Cloud on its own or together with a partner, you need to prepare for the change. An important step is to assess your environments and applications for their migration readiness in light of your company’s business goals. You need to draw up recommendations, including, e.g., areas that need further improvement, greater changes or different technologies. How do we approach this task at Altkom Software? Read on to learn about our recommendations.

    As you prepare for the analysis of your current environment, we recommend using analysis and data collection tools. They will allow you to get a set of data-driven recommendations adapted to the architecture and maturity of your organisation and lay the foundation for any further well-informed decisions on cloud migration, process optimisation, or digital transformation. When it comes to Azure cloud services, which is the subject here, you may consider exploring the options offered by the Well-Architected Framework. It will help you draw up a good plan that prioritises loads, processing and apps during cloud migration. For larger projects, we always prepare a cost-optimised scenario for our clients, including the latest Azure resources and functionalities at an optimal cost.

    Migration to Azure Cloud – analysis scope and time

    The analysis and recommendations process should not take more than 2-4 weeks. The exact time depends on team experience and expert availability. If it’s a problem, you might consider outsourcing this part of the project to an experienced partner. Apart from significantly reducing analysis time, it will also minimise your engagement down to c. 1-2 MD. 

    These tasks should produce a report on the current migration readiness level, recommended environment changes, cost analysis and proposed directions for further development and investment. The next step would be to prepare a Business Case of cloud migration and an IT strategy for tools, technologies, and further development.

    Migration to Azure Cloud – process

    Cloud readiness should be assessed in a way that has been previously tested in other projects. We recommend that you start from a background analysis, and then focus on data collection and analysis, and present your conclusions in a coherent report. Below, you will find a handful of practical ideas to suggest what you should pay special attention to at various stages of the process and examples of actions you could take. 

    The process of assessing the readiness of migrating envitonments and applications to the Azure Cloud

    Background analysis: 

    • Collect information on your migration scope and expectations; 
    • Collect information on your background and business needs. 

    Data collection and analysis: 

    • Configure a data collection tool; 
    • Collect and analyse data; 
    • Consider your business requirements and specific goals; 
    • Draw up a plan for subsequent actions; 
    • Create a report with an analysis and recommendations. 

    Presentation: 

    • Present your recommendations on configuration, costs and subsequent steps to your stakeholders and the technical team. 

    Example measures: 

    • Prepare the migration plan and architecture; 
    • Sell a cloud subscription; 
    • Prepare a Landing Zone; 
    • Prepare the IaC environment in the cloud; 
    • Prepare the CI/CD environment in the cloud; 
    • Prepare a PoC of migrating a selected environment or application; 
    • Help organisations from the financial sector to ensure compliance with the recommendations of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (UKNF). 

    When should you perform a readiness analysis?

    Apart from obvious situations, it also makes sense to perform a cloud readiness analysis whenever your company: 

    • Wants to take the first steps toward cloud migration, but you’re unsure whether your technologies are up to scratch; 
    • Struggles with End of Support issues for servers and databases; 
    • Is thinking about its IT development strategy (including choosing a technology) or wants to prepare a Business Case.  

    The process is not easy, especially if you’re doing it for the first time, so you might want to consider falling back on the experience of experts. Even though we haven’t discussed this subject at greater length here, when thinking about cloud “readiness”, you must also consider your own IT department and other app and system users. 

    You have just read a post in our series devoted to Microsoft Azure Cloud management. Check out our other articles: 

    Adam Lejman
    Adam Lejman
    CEO Altkom Software & Consulting Sp. z o.o. A graduate of the Warsaw University of Technology and its former researcher. He started to implement his first large commercial projects in the late 1990s, working in the structures of Altkom. Until 2006, he was the director of the Enterprise Risk Services department at Deloitte, responsible for projects implemented for the banking sector. Since 2006, he has been at the helm of the Altkom Software development company, first as the COO and currently as the CEO. Since 2019, he has also managed the Altkom Experts company.