When you think of cloud migrations, you probably imagine the typical pattern: lifting and shifting an on-premises environment to a single cloud.
However, once an enterprises’ workload is hosted on the cloud, their needs can change. Workloads can change, and services and costs of cloud providers can change, too.
Because of this, a workload manager may decide to migrate to a new cloud configuration, or even divide their workload into an increasingly popular multi-cloud environment.
While this process may appear complex, tools like the Akasia Infrastructure Modeler can help simplify cloud-to-cloud migrations and identify savings to reduce costs in the long run.
What is cloud-to-cloud migration
A cloud-to-cloud migration is the migration of an entire workload, or pieces of a workload, to one or multiple alternative cloud platforms. For example, a company could migrate their entire environment from AWS to IBM Cloud, or move parts of their workload from Oracle to Google to create a multi cloud environment.
Why undertake a cloud to cloud migration
A system administrator may choose to undergo a cloud-to-cloud migration for a number of reasons. As stated above, as organizations shift and grow, their data storage needs change. Their initial cloud configuration may no longer be the best fit.
Some examples of reasons to migrate from one cloud to another include:
- Increased security
- Stronger resilience and/or adaptability
- Attractive or useful technological updates
- Increased scalability to support a company’s growth
- Decreased costs
Challenges of cloud-to-cloud migrations
There are numerous challenges associated with planning a cloud-to-cloud migrations. These range from minor inconveniences to serious issues that can affect business reputation and revenue.
- Data collection. The process of collecting data necessary to model a cloud migration can be slow and tedious. For instances where workloads to be migrated number in the hundreds or thousands, the process of ingesting source data is complex and takes time. This is especially true if the inventory data requires transformation and normalization, and in wide-ranging source environments such as VMware, Hyper-V, physical and cloud infrastructure.
- Cost surprises in the cloud. Each cloud platform has unique cost paradigms. Platforms may charge different rates for the same storage capacities, or design different cost models that system administrators must work within. Network and I/O costs can be significantly inconsistent across cloud providers. It’s important to account for all costs, both obvious and hidden, before choosing a host platform.
- Identifying single or multi-cloud cost savings. Each cloud provider has constantly changing products, licensing costs, discounts, and technological upgrades. Cost variables for a workload in the cloud include infrastructure, services, and operational costs. This becomes especially challenging to juggle in a multi-cloud environment. Understanding and finding the most cost-effective option for all of these variables is necessary to maximize savings in the cloud.
How Akasia accelerates cloud-to-cloud migrations
Planning for cloud-to-cloud migrations is challenging, but the good news is you’re not alone.
Akasia Infrastructure Modeler, Cloud-to-Cloud Edition™, is a SaaS solution that inventories current infrastructure and provides unbiased, automated cloud cost modeling across all major cloud platforms. Our tool allows users to model source (on-premises or cloud) infrastructure costs, allowing for clients and partners to identify the most cost-effective cloud configuration for migrating to a target cloud infrastructure.
Akasia’s solutions address each of the 3 challenges above:
- To accelerate data collection, Akasia Infrastructure Modeler supports the ingestion of workload inventory data from a wide variety of popular tools though our new Akasia Universal Translator™. This allows Akasia to ingest inventory and workload capacity data from all popular tools, including vCenter, RV Tools, SCOM, CMDB, and native cloud monitoring tools such as AWS Cloudwatch. Bypassing the need for monitoring agents saves time which would normally be spent collecting data about the source infrastructure environment, resulting in much more rapid cloud migration assessments. Learn more about Akasia Universal Translator here.
- To eliminate cost surprises in the hybrid or multi cloud, Akasia discovers all VMs in the current environment and automatically calculates cloud costs for the existing workload. Our software includes hidden costs such as network and I/O that may incur extra charges in the new cloud environment(s).
- To identify cloud cost savings, Akasia automatically maps to the most optimal cloud resources. Our solutions guide users through all “what-if” scenarios to analyze and maximize cloud usage. Further, they provide a complete bill of materials that form an excellent starting point for cloud migrations.
“Previously, Akasia has primarily been focused on On-Premises to Cloud infrastructure migration cost planning and analysis,” said Garima Thockchom, Founder of Akasia, Inc. “With our new Cloud-to-Cloud edition, we are very excited to address this new market for customers that want to ensure that their decision to migrate from one cloud platform to another makes financial sense.”
Akasia makes cloud cost optimization and decision-making easy by enabling cost comparisons between:
- All major cloud platforms: AWS, Azure, GCP, IBM Cloud and Oracle Cloud.
- VMware-on-Cloud vs Cloud Native virtualization
- On-Premises vs Cloud
- As-is vs Right-sized infrastructure
- Always-On vs Pause-and-Resume infrastructure
- BYOL vs License Included
Conclusion
Cloud-to-cloud migration planning may seem complicated, but with the right tools it can be a breeze.
You can learn more about Akasia Infrastructure Modeler here and in our comprehensive whitepaper.
