How to Migrate to Microsoft Azure - A Step by Step Plan

Whether you want to give wings to your idea and develop a new app or you want to overhaul a system and give it a new look, Microsoft Azure provides you the perfect platform to fulfill your desires. This cloud computing service is developed by Microsoft and it has been extensively used for creating, quality testing, and managing applications. With support for many programming languages, it is a tremendous solution and many companies are migrating to Microsoft Azure for better results. Such is the popularity of the Azure platform that it helped Microsoft generate $1 billion in total worldwide revenue from Azure in nearly half a decade. The increase in the growth of Azure is the sole reason why you should consider Microsoft azure training for enhancing your chances of getting a job in IT.

Migrating to Azure

The clear benefits of Azure make migrating to this platform quite attractive for IT companies. With a migration to Azure an organization can add value to their operations and gain in the long run. Below is a step-by-step plan that an organization can follow to go through this transition:

A. Observe Trends, Discover and Assess

Start off your migration by assessing applications and documenting the inventory items that you already have. As inventories are hardly ever up to date, you need to discover what your organization is lacking and how the addition of new inventory items can help you in reducing the workload. By assessing and discovering your assets, you can plan for the future and proactively devise a comprehensive strategy for achieving your goals. You may feel like rushing to the migration phase after discovery. However, you need to assess your goals first. Document your goals, assess your strategy, and then align your plan with the objectives. Perform an in-depth analysis and figure out the best destination and any processes required in your preparation for migration.

B. Identify Targets

Before migrating, you need to decide the workload that you will be migrating to Microsoft Azure. You can include:

1. For Email move to Microsoft Exchange Online
2. For document management move to SharePoint Online
3. For IM, voice, video and shared application communications move to Skype for Business Online

The targeting should be done while keeping in mind these three characteristics of Azure:

1. If you are looking at enhancement with respect to speed of work and flexibility of storage, Microsoft Azure will surely make a difference. Processing power of Azure is also a desirable characteristic that can surely sway you into moving to this platform.
2. You can use cloud for migrating Virtual Machines that are not critical to the operation. Migrate VMs in the cloud which won’t be affected by latency and don’t require frequent connections to other resources.
3. Also, consider the support of your operating system by Microsoft Azure before migrating.

C. Move to Azure

Finally making the move to Azure require you to consider the amount of management responsibility you’re willing to take for your environment.

There are two service models that you should evaluate before moving to Azure:

Host and Guests Model

Azure provides customers with VMs that are all running on “host” servers. The responsibility of running and managing the host operations will lie with Microsoft. The VMs and “guest” OS will be taken over by you. You will have the control applications running on the guest OS.

Control Model

In this service model, Microsoft manages all the servers, storage, networking, and virtualization. There are three services in the control model:

1. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
2. Platform as a Service (PaaS)
3. Software as a Service (SaaS)

Before switching to Azure, you should evaluate your current situation by following all the steps mentioned above for a seamless and comfortable transition.

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