Cost Optimization in Cloud Migration: How to Avoid Surprises

Choosing the perfect cloud migration services provider is one challenging task!

Cloud migration offers infinite benefits to enterprises, from flexibility to scalability as well as reduced infrastructural costs. However, a cloud migration process is never successful without its hurdles, especially when it comes to cost optimization.

You may notice that many enterprises suffer from unexpected cost surprises once the cloud migration process is completed.

According to a survey, 83% of enterprises reported that their cloud spend exceeds $1.2 million per year.

In this blog, you will learn how to avoid surprises during cloud migration. before we get into it, we will go over the common mistakes that enterprises make during the cloud migration process.

Why do cloud migration process costs spiral out of control?

There are several costs that you pay for cloud migration services that sometimes boost your overall expenses. Let’s find out the common mistakes that you can make during the cloud migration process.

1. You choose the wrong team**

It is very crucial to choose the right migration partner for your cloud migration strategy. Still, sometimes people choose a migration partner on the basis of low pricing and comfort rather than their services. Some businesses attempt to cut costs on partnerships by assigning the migration project to an internal team, regardless of their preparation level. Such practices often lead to errors, increasing costs after a longer period.

2. You pay attention at the wrong place

Sometimes in order to move fast, businesses move unmodified workloads to the cloud. However, for various on-premises apps, the best option would be no movement at all. The best practice would be to re-release and rewrite an app for the cloud or swap it with a SaaS solution. Rushing towards rehosting and preventing updates can increase operating costs after migration.

3. Indirect hidden costs

Sometimes, businesses overlook the indirect project costs while preparing the budget for cloud migration. These costs are usually related to organizational transformation so that it can operate properly in the public cloud or the expenses related to unused data center capacity. However, these costs are usually inevitable but very important and should be considered in the initial budget of cloud migration.

4. You accelerate the application assessments

Application assessment is the most critical early phase in the cloud migration process. It helps in deciding which cloud migration approach can be used for each application. Neglecting a full assessment of workloads that are to be migrated is a frequent error, leading to incomplete specification of migration prerequisites and the possibility for the scope to go downstream.

If possible, you can ask the cloud migration service provider to submit the initial cost at the time of the project start and then submit the revised statement with a final cost after the completion of the application assessment.

5. The landing zone design is not up to the mark

If the plan of your landing zone, i.e. foundational cloud environment, where workloads are migrated, is not up to the mark, it can lead to an increase in compliance and security expenses. The setup of the landing zone must include integration with identity directories, formulation of account structures, establishment of virtual private cloud (VPC) networking, establishment of infrastructure for security, monitoring, and configuration management, and creation of role-based access control (RBAC) roles and rule sets. You have to make sure that these environments are set up well in advance of migration and are not left to include in the scope of work.

6. Dependency Barriers

If the application assessment is not done adequately, there can be a possibility of an error regarding the identification of dependency barriers. Failing to identify and inclusion of interconnections among the on-premises systems that are being moved can create a mix-up in categorizing and sequencing of the application migration process. This can result in delays in meeting the timelines and ultimately increasing the costs. So, businesses shouldn’t miss considering dependencies during application assessment to lead the migration process effectively and within timelines.

Article Source: https://medium.com/@infiraise/cost-optimization-in-cloud-migration-how-to-avoid-surprises-b61d56fcf73e