Migration Planning
Dan Sullivan · 2019
This chapter focuses on application and data migration planning. For many organizations, cloud computing is a new approach to delivering information services. These organizations may have built large, complex infrastructures running a wide array of applications using on-premises data centers. Now those same organizations want to realize the advantages of cloud computing. They can start by building new systems in the cloud. That will bring some benefits, but there are likely further advantages to migrating existing applications from on-premises data centers to the cloud. Cloud migrations are inherently about incrementally changing existing infrastructure in order to use cloud services to deliver information services. During migrations, some applications will move to the cloud, but those migrated applications may be integrated with other applications still running on-premises. Before migrating data, you should understand any regulations that cover that data. For example, in the United States, the privacy of personal healthcare data is governed by HIPAA regulations, while in the European Union, the GDPR restricts where data on EU citizens may be stored. Businesses and organizations may have their own data classifications and data governance policies. These should be investigated, and if they exist, considered when planning data migrations.