Data is at the heart of successful application deployments, analytic workflows, and innovative machine learning. When migrating data to the cloud, you need to understand, among other things, where the data is for different use cases, what types of data are moving, and what network resources are available.

The cloud provides you with various benefits, including significant cost savings, increased productivity, resiliency and service continuity, and business agility. Organizations around the world realize the importance of the cloud.

Migrate to AWS means any movement of the workload from on-premises, hosted, or other public clouds.

Reasons To Migrate On-Premise Application To AWS?

On-premise cloud hosting is the traditional approach in which all the required software and infrastructure for a given application reside in-house. On a larger scale, this could mean the business hosts its own data center on-site.

Running applications on-site includes buying and maintaining in-house servers and infrastructure. Apart from physical space, this solution demands a dedicated IT staff qualified to maintain and monitor servers and their security.

Cloud computing is an umbrella term that refers to computing services via the internet. By definition, it is a platform that allows the delivery of applications and services. These services include computing, storage, database, monitoring, security, networking, analytics, and other related operations.

The key characteristic of cloud computing is that you pay for what you use. The cloud service provider also maintains its network architecture, giving you the freedom to focus on your application.

For companies considering their first cloud migration, you’ll want to take into account a lot of factors — from the benefits and the risks to the cloud service model and type that is right for your business.

The 8 reasons for switching from on-premise to the cloud:

Drive IT costs down;
Increase security in the cloud;
Reach wider markets;
Accelerate deployments;
Increase customer satisfaction;
More time on innovation.

Cons of using on-premises software:

The training cost is significantly higher for this model;
The cost involves and associated risks should be managed by the customer;
A solid security policy is required;
Disaster recovery has to be managed by the customer side;
Long-time commitment is necessary to maintain longer implementation;
Needed wider bandwidth to let a large number of users access the same application.

The Benefits of Cloud Over On-Premises

Widespread adoption of cloud has led many vendors to shift focus from on-premise solutions to cloud delivery models, giving rise to the question ‘which is best for my business’?

The fundamental difference between cloud-based and on-premises software is where it sits. The on-premises software is installed locally on your enterprise computers and servers, while the cloud software is hosted on the vendor’s server and accessed through a web browser.

There are some fundamental differences between on-premises and the cloud. Choosing your business’s right path depends entirely on your needs and what you are looking for in a solution.

⇒ Deployment

On-Premises: Resources are deployed in-house and within an enterprise’s IT infrastructure. An enterprise is responsible for maintaining the solution and all its related processes.

Cloud: Resources are hosted on the premises of the service provider, but enterprises can access those resources and use them as much as they want at any given time.

⇒ Cost

On-Premises: Enterprises are responsible for the ongoing costs of server hardware, power consumption, and space.

Cloud: Enterprises only need to pay for the resources they use, with none of the maintenance and upkeep costs, and the price adjusts up or down depending on how much is consumed.

⇒ Control

On-Premises: Enterprises retain all their data and are entirely in control of what happens to it, for better or worse. Companies in highly regulated industries with extra privacy concerns are more likely to hesitate to leap into the cloud before others because of this reason.

Cloud: Data and encryption keys reside within your third-party provider, so if the unexpected happens and there is downtime, you may be unable to access that data.

⇒ Security

On-Premises: Companies with extra sensitive information, such as the government and banking industry, must have a certain level of security and privacy that an on-premises environment provides. Despite the cloud’s promise, safety is the primary concern for many industries, so an on-premises environment, despite some of its drawbacks and price tag, makes more sense.

Cloud: Security concerns remain the number one barrier to a cloud computing deployment. There have been many publicized cloud breaches, and IT departments around the world are concerned. From personal information of employees such as login credentials to a loss of intellectual property, the security threats are real.

⇒ Compliance

On-Premises: Many companies these days operate under some form of regulatory control, regardless of the industry. Perhaps the most common one is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) for private health information. Still, many others, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), contain detailed student records and other government and industry regulations. For companies that are subject to such rules, they must remain compliant and know where their data is at all times.

Cloud: Enterprises that choose a cloud computing model must do their due diligence and ensure that their third-party provider is up to code and compliant with all of the different regulatory mandates within their industry. Sensitive data must be secured, and customers, partners, and employees must have their privacy ensured.

Additional reading: Architecting HIPAA Compliant Cloud On AWS
Additional reading: Guidance on HIPAA Compliant Cloud Hosting

Knowledge Of AWS Ecosystem

Users can find nearly everything they need within the confines of AWS to create almost any application they may want to implement. These services are available via the AWS ecosystem — the offerings of Amazon partners and third parties that host their AWS offerings.

So, in addition to the 25+ services AWS itself offers, users can find services that:

Offer pre-configured virtual machines with software components already installed and configured to enable quick use;
Manipulate images;
Transmit or stream video;
Integrate applications;
Monitor application performance;
Ensure application security;
Operate billing and subscriptions;
Manage healthcare claims;
Offer real estate for sale;
Analyze genomic data;
Host websites;
Provide customer support.

Many companies host their on-premise applications on AWS, drawn to it for the same reasons that end users are drawn to it: low cost, easy access, and high scalability. AWS’s exciting trend is the increasing move by traditional software vendors to migrate their on-premise applications to AWS and provide them as SaaS.

Knowledge of the AWS Basic Services

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides many services for the provision of various services, such as data storage (file hosting, distributed data storage), virtual server rental, provision of computing power, etc. These services help organizations grow faster, lower IT costs, and scale:

EC2 – Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. An IaaS service that provides virtual servers that are controlled by APIs based on the Xen hypervisor. Equivalent remote services include Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine, and Rackspace; and solutions installed on local OpenStack or Eucalyptus servers.

Scope of application: Host things that you think are computers.

IAM – AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). Is a web service that helps you securely control access to AWS resources. You use IAM to control who is authenticated (signed in) and authorized (has permissions) to use resources.

Scope of application: Customize users, add new AWS Keys and certificates.

S3 – Amazon Simple Storage Service. It provides object storage, scales and is accessible through the Web Service interface. Applicable for backups / archiving, file storage (including media) and hosting, hosting static web pages, program data, etc.

Scope of application: Store photos and other materials for websites. Keep your backups and files shared—store static sites. By the way, many services also store their data in S3.

VPC – Amazon Virtual Private Cloud. Creates a logical, isolated set of AWS resources that can be pooled using a VPN. A competitor’s solution, OpenStack or HPE Helion Eucalyptus, is used in conjunction with PaaS software.

Scope of application: Add an extra layer of protection to everything you store online. Make it look like all of your AWS services are on one small network, rather than scattered across a huge one.

Lambda – AWS App Scripts. Serverless computing platform. Runs code in response to internal or external events such as an HTTP request, publicly providing the required resources. Lambda is deeply integrated with AWS, but services like Google Cloud Functions and open source solutions like OpenWhisk are gaining popularity.

Scope of application: Run small snippets in JS, Java, or Python for specific tasks.

How To Migrate on-Premise Application To AWS

As is already known, the cloud provides you with various benefits, including significant cost savings, increased workforce productivity, operational resilience, and continuity of services, along with business agility.

There are several strategies for migrating applications to new environments. One of the most common cloud migration models is the transfer of data and applications from a local data center to a public cloud like AWS cloud.

Here are the steps in the migration process from the on-premises application to AWS Cloud:

⇒Phase 1. Discovery.

Define which applications can be moved to the cloud and which can’t.

⇒Phase 2. Assessment.

Choose a migration method. Depending on the data, AWS provides different ways to migrate your application, such as AWS Snowball, AWS Snowmobile, AWS Direct Connect, and so on. Once you choose the right way to move your data, also look for the resources you need.

⇒Phase 3. Proof of concept (POC) for AWS storage.

Once you know how and what to transfer, you need to figure out how and where you will store it. The whole motivation for moving to AWS is to minimize costs. In this step, you will test your workload and learn about the AWS Storage Service, its benefits, limitations, and required security controls.

⇒Phase 4. Migrating on-premise applications to AWS.

Now that you have all the prerequisites you need, such as a plan, migration tools, destination list, backups, and syncing with your local data repositories. Finally, you can move your project to the AWS cloud. Once your project is migrated to the cloud, reliability, and longevity are added value to you.

⇒Phase 5. Corporate cloud operations.

You have already migrated on-premise to AWS at this stage, and AWS will provide the updates that you need to incorporate into your existing architecture. Therefore, you should make sure you have a 24/7 support team that tracks system maintenance and updates after migration.

Conclusion

The experience and outcome of migrating the on-premise applications to AWS are unique to every organization, but there is a commonality approach.

The move to the cloud has brought several benefits at once. AWS Cloud provides scalability, resiliency, flexibility, and reliability for the enterprise. It can be tricky, but you need to choose the right team to make a move.

To take advantage of the AWS Cloud, enterprises should adopt a phased migration strategy and try to take advantage of the cloud as early as possible. Whether it’s a typical 3-tier web application, an overnight batch process, or a complex internal processing workflow, most applications can be migrated to the cloud. After you move your first application to the cloud, you will get new ideas and see the value of moving more cloud applications.

Feel free to reach DevCom if you want to learn more about on-premise to AWS migration. Security and scalability—those two things are critical for us, and we guarantee them for your business.