With the increasing need to make applications and data available for effective operations for users that may be working from more than one location — or even more than one country — making good use of the cloud is more important than ever. What some people don’t realize is that there is more than one way to bring workflows to the cloud.

That’s why making use of a knowledgeable cloud modernization consulting team is key to an effective cloud usage strategy. Recognizing the differences between migration and modernization and identifying the workflows, processes, and applications that can be optimized via one or both of those operations can be difficult for decision makers who are not steeped in knowledge of effective cloud usage.

AI-Vets has leveraged years of experience with cloud migration strategy, cloud modernization implementation, and information security to establish themselves as a trusted name in the cloud operations sphere for both private and governmental organizations.

Understanding the differences between modernization and migration as well as some use-cases for both will help ensure that your cloud helps optimize your operations instead of muddying up your workflows unnecessarily.

Why Cloud Confusion Can Cost Time and Money

The biggest mistake decision makers stumble into is confusing modernization and migration. They both involve the cloud, but are different processes with different goals, but not everyone realizes that.

Cloud migration is used to bring data and applications into the cloud while modernization is about using the capabilities of the cloud to optimize the speed, resilience, and cost-effectiveness of your workflows and processes.

When someone requests migration when they mean modernization or expects migration to include modernization, their budgets and timelines are thrown off. Their partners will give them what they understand has been requested, but now the client needs to set up a new contract and factor in the extra cost and unexpected time commitment to get what they could have had if they had known what to ask for in the first place.

So instead of one cost for an optimally scheduled and implemented regimen of changes to both information storage and process efficiency, cloud confusion leads to multiple contracts and delays as new plans and priorities need to be hammered out.

Cloud Migration Defined

When looking at the ins and outs of your cloud adoption framework, migration can be defined as moving data and applications into the cloud. This can mean transitioning to a private cloud, a public cloud, or a hybrid cloud, but no matter the form your cloud takes, your data will no longer be housed only on servers at a single, specific, physical location.

There are multiple goals and purposes for cloud migrations. The most common way to frame cloud migration objectives is through The “R’s.”

The Migration Strategy Menu (The “R’s” in Plain English)

• REHOST: Moving applications to the cloud without changing the code or architecture (often called “lift-and-shift”)
• RELOCATE: Taking virtual machines from one environment to another without modifications (typically done to maintain operational consistency while providing a more scalable environment)
• REPLATFORM: Using migration to provide a targeted optimization without changing architecture (for example, containerizing apps)
• REFACTOR/REARCHITECT: Creating new architecture for migrating applications, most often seen as breaking monolithic functions into smaller units to make continuous integration and deployment smoother (this is a great way to add features or improve scalability)
• REPURCHASE: Replacing existing software with cloud-based solutions (most often used when migrating legacy software is less cost-effective than adopting an SaaS solution)
• RETIRE: Eliminating redundant, low-value, or obsolete applications as part of a cloud migration (since migration includes a rigorous cataloging of processes, it often turns up tools that no longer carry the necessity they once did)
• RETAIN FOR REVISITATION: Identifying programs that need to be kept on-premise for now because for compliance or unique dependencies (more often than not, in these situations, all it takes is a bit more careful planning for a smooth migration at a later date)

A cloud migration assessment from an experienced partner such as AI-Vets will help clarify the need for one or more of these R’s. Sometimes, the differences can be hard to parse. It seems like, when looking at a rehost vs replatform, they should be interchangeable terms. But they aren’t.

Rehosting will move information and applications without changes. A replatform puts applications into a new architecture to augment functionality in targeted ways. That’s very different.

That also helps show the differences between a refactor vs replatform. Again, to replatform you are changing architecture without changing the existing code of the applications you are migrating. A refactor will break an application into component parts to allow for future improvements and optimizations.

In the same way that helping decision makers recognize the difference between migration and modernization helps save time and money, ensuring that they know what kinds of migration may be needed can help make the planning stages go smoothly for an efficient migration project.

Cloud Modernization Defined

Any good cloud modernization consulting firm will tell you that modernizing your technology usage for the cloud will include improving all or some of the following: architecture, code, operations, and security posture. It’s all about getting the most out of your cloud-native tech.

The thing to remember is that modernization is not something that occurs in opposition to migration. They are different processes, but they can be done in conjunction with each other — but they will get in each others’ way if the sequencing of each process is not carefully planned out. The timing matters.

What Modernization Often Includes

The following is a list of common improvements and changes that are made viable in the cloud.

• Refactoring and rewriting patterns
• Containerization and implementation of Kubernetes for application management and expansion
• Managed databases
• Event-driven integration
• Continuous integration/Continuous development
• Observability
• Resilience patterns

Cloud modernization can also be used to make big “operating models” improvements like the following:

• FinOps cost optimization
• Superior SRE practices
• Automated policy guardrails for security and compliance

Cloud Modernization vs Cloud Migration: The Differences That Matter

When team leaders and executives in the public and private sectors are looking to take advantage of the cloud, it is imperative that they know what each operation brings to the table so that their transition to cloud-based functions runs efficiently.

And while both modernization and migration can be complimentary to each other, understanding each is important to identifying the costs, timeframes, outcomes, long-term maintainability, risks, agility, and security of their cloud-based activities.

Outcomes

Successful migration leads to faster infrastructure and foundational cloud access for the full organization. Meanwhile, modernization takes that base and provides improved reliability, scalability, delivery velocity, and long term cost-to-serve savings.

Risk Profile

Nothing is without risk. Whether you take a public, private, or hybrid cloud strategy, both migration and modernization carry risks that may affect your organization. Migration risks include data movement, connectivity, identity, and downtime windows while modernization carries risks associated with design changes, testing scope, organizational changes, and platform dependencies.

Timeline and Complexity

Adding modernization to migration will add time to your implementation of the cloud. Modernization projects need to be properly sequenced with migration so that data is not lost and application code is not messed up in transition. By taking care, planning ahead, and sequencing operations intelligently, migration and modernization can be completed together for improved operations across the board.

When to Choose Migration in Federal Environments

Government departments must be careful because they carry so much personal information of citizens and businesses throughout the country. That said, sticking with legacy systems will not always serve constituents as well as they could be served by a department utilizing the cloud.

Good Candidates for Migration

• Stable systems with low change demand and well-understood boundaries
• Deadline-driven data center exits or hosting contract transitions with a schedule as the primary constraint
• Environments that require standardized, compliant hosting such as those that need to meet FedRAMP standards
• Any workload where a lift-and-shift project can immediately reduce operational risk
• When capacity must be increased quickly for things like mission surges or seasonal demands

Red Flags for Migration Only-Projects

Not everything can be immediately improved by a migration-only project. Be sure that you aren’t creating unnecessary risks to constituent data and important information.

• Root causes of chronic outages and incidents in systems with poor reliability won’t be addressed with just a migration
• Zero trust cloud architecture is important to security, but applications with poor boundaries will need redesigns to maintain that architecture
• Data-heavy workloads with poor classification, sharing rules, or record requirements carry a high compliance risk when moved between environments
• Brittle integrations and interfaces can break down during cutover, creating mission disruption
• Some platforms come with vendor lock-in or licensing constraints that will increase costs of cloud migration and hosting without modernization

When to Choose Modernization for Mission Outcomes

Something to keep in mind is that cloud modernization is not about technology preference. It exists to improve architecture, delivery, and security posture in order to meet performance, resilience, and compliance goals and requirements.

Good Candidates for Modernization

• Mission-critical systems in which availability, resilience, and response time is directly related to outcomes
• High operational toil systems that can leverage modernization to reduce workload and risk
• Systems that require Zero Trust patterns to satisfy federal security requirements
• Data and analytics pipelines supporting decision advantages such as faster insights with anomaly detection
• Integration-heavy platforms that require improved auditability across partner ecosystems via APIs and eventing.

When to Defer Modernization

• If dependencies and system boundaries are unknown
• If data ownership is unclear or messy
• If there is insufficient runway for testing and validation in a mission-critical environment
• If the program requires a near-term transition first

The Regulated-Environment Lens

Something that cloud migration and modernization offers is a chance to take stock of data security and regulatory compliance. Regulated cloud compliance can be built into your cloud environment and strengthened through modernization processes.

AI-Vets puts compliance front-and-center when developing migration and modernization strategies with partners. It’s why we have been able to work successfully with government agencies as well as with partners in highly regulated industries such as healthcare and finance.

Landing Zones and Guardrails Before Scale

Taking a policy-as-code approach, the cloud environment can be designed with identity boundaries, logging standards, encryption, and segmentation in place to make audit evidence collection and compliance confirmation simple.

Modernization as a Security Upgrade (When Done Intentionally)

By establishing security guardrails in the cloud, modernization projects can then be utilized to further improve the safety of your data. Observability and monitoring functions can be optimized in the new environments you have established for your data and applications. Additionally, cloud modernization allows for improvements in authorization protocols, secret handling, and patching.

A Practical Sequencing Model for Federal Programs

Mission continuity for federal programs is critical. Cloud migration and modernization must be sequenced properly and effectively to avoid interruptions that can cause great harm to citizens that rely on those programs. Total, “big bang” rewrites of code or constant “lift-and-shift” operations must be avoided to ensure that services do not suffer interruptions.

Phase 1: Discover and Classify

Take stock of application portfolio rationalization. Look for redundancies and opportunities to improve efficiencies, track and map dependencies, identify mission-critical functions, and keep RMF/FedRAMP constraints in mind.

Phase 2: Build the Platform Foundation

Put identity and Zero Trust guardrails in place, establish network boundaries, create landing zones, establish backup and disaster recovery in the cloud contingencies, and put policy baselines in place.

Phase 3: Migrate the Right Workloads Quickly

Identify hosting deadlines and migration priorities. Then rehost or replatform data and applications according to those deadlines and priorities as needed.

Phase 4: Modernize for Measurable Mission Outcomes

With priorities established and migration complete, implement modernization strategies to achieve the mission outcomes at the heart of this project. Those outcomes may include resilience, improved performance, delivery speed, and reduced operational toil.

The Metrics That Prove You Chose the Right Strategy

Putting a cloud operating model in place is all well and good, but in order to demonstrate that it is worth the effort and investment, you need to be able to identify and track key metrics that are measurable, commercial, and leadership-friendly.

Migration Metrics

To track the ROI on a migration project, identify the percent of data and applications transferred, the number of outage minutes, cutover success rate, cost baseline, and security control coverage.

Modernization Metrics

With modernization, keeping tabs on deployment frequency, change failure rate, mean time to repair (MTTR), incident volume reduction, and infrastructure utilization will demonstrate the value of your efforts.

Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Migration and modernization are valuable projects, but there are mistakes that can add time and cost to your efforts. By keeping these pitfalls in mind, you can avoid them and get the most out of your cloud usage.

• Migration without security and compliance guardrails
• Modernization without specific improvement goals for business cases
• Treating the cloud as a single destination instead of as a portfolio
• Tool sprawl and inconsistent patterns across teams and departments

How AI-Vets Supports Both Cloud Migration And Modernization

AI-Vets knows how to avoid the potential mistakes and dangers of poorly conceived cloud migration and modernization projects through our outcome-focused delivery and disciplined execution. Managing risk and carefully planning out implementation strategies are core to our approach with every partner.

Our cloud modernization consulting approach balances regulation and compliance requirements with efficient execution and outcome-focused strategy. To see how AI-Vets can improve your organization’s performance, contact us today and see how high the cloud can take you.