A Better Cloud Migration Approach: CMLA Explained

The Challenge of “Cloud First” in a Hybrid World

Many companies have accelerated their cloud-first strategies and have been searching for new, reliable ways to complete their cloud journeys. However, many IT teams still feel weighed down by a skills gap for cloud management and legacy infrastructure that remains foundational to ongoing operations. The reality of a largely hybrid world is that undoubtedly one that will run into roadblocks when aspiring to be cloud native.

“88% of enterprise IT organizations have a cloud-first strategy, yet 86% of enterprise infrastructure spend is still directed to technology on-premises”
– Gartner: Source: 4 Trends Impacting Cloud Adoption in 2020

A Comprehensive Approach to Cloud Migration

With Cloud Migration Lifecycle Assurance

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The Problem with Typical Cloud Migrations

While nearly all midsize businesses have cloud-first strategies, many are challenged to hire and retain cloud talent. And this makes sense, since the majority of IT departments in midsize companies over ten years old have long needed extensive talent for a pre-cloud era, one where deep expertise is focused around running and maintaining an on-premise datacenter with skill and efficiency. But now that cloud has shifted expectations for availability and accessibility, many are challenged to migrate away from this traditional model to an environment largely unfamiliar to their staff. Since their operations still depend upon legacy infrastructure, the IT teams in these companies need to make difficult decisions of whether to retire, retain, or refactor these older applications. Indeed, keeping legacy applications may sometimes mean adopting hybrid tools to virtualize everything for proper use in the cloud.

Furthermore, with such an immense pressure on getting into the cloud, many may be forgetting how they will conduct business after they’ve reached the cloud. How will being in the cloud shift daily IT operations? A cloud lifecycle extends well beyond the migration stage, demanding ongoing iteration for performance, spending, compliance and security posture.

Introducing CMLA: A Better Process for Migration

With over 25 years supporting clients in their datacenters and over a decade of cloud experience, InterVision has recognized the challenges companies are facing. We know that it’s hard to translate time-earned datacenter expertise into cloud expertise overnight. We’ve cultivated a truly balanced and unique perspective of how to best migrate to the cloud, which we’ve combined into a single proven process: the Cloud Migration Lifecycle Assurance (CMLA) program.

InterVision’s Cloud Migration Lifecycle Assurance (CMLA) program provides midsize, enterprise and public sector organizations a comprehensive approach to AWS cloud migration, operation and optimization. CMLA provides an approach that adheres to AWS Well Architected frameworks within governed and optimized landing zones. We eliminate the knowledge gap between legacy and cloud systems that stalls most cloud initiatives while mitigating the risk of poor cyber hygiene and cost sprawl. Our detailed approach takes cloud migration a step further by enabling organizations to tap into a deep bench of AWS talent for training, day-to-day cloud services technical support and quarterly optimization reviews.

CMLA has two primary objectives:

Fast and effective migration completion
Efficient and reliable ongoing operations

To achieve these objectives, CMLA quickly aligns with your current migration project progress and understands your ongoing operational needs. Whether you have already migrated some applications to the cloud, or are just starting, the CMLA migration process will complete your migration.

What CMLA Entails

CMLA was founded upon a prescriptive process that InterVision has developed, which looks like the following:

Discovery & Analysis: Plans the first steps in your journey to the cloud, producing workload inventory and initial details that feed into the next phase, as well as standard architectural patterns and best practices.
Foundational Planning: Begins with the pre-migration questionnaire, automated discovery data, and Migration Readiness Assessment, and concludes with design recommendations for the landing zone, shared services, automation & orchestration, and security & governance.
Foundational Build: Begins with the Landing Zone Plan, Shared Services Plan, Automation & Orchestration Plan, and the Security Plan and includes design and implementation of a multi-account landing zone with the selected shared services deployed.
Migration Phase: Begins with the migration plan and the landing zone build in AWS, including the design of workload hosting, deployment, and the migration. At the end of this phase, workloads will be running in the cloud and their management systems will be in place and ready to help manage change.
Ongoing Operations: InterVision’s operational support begins with our matured approach toward monitoring, patching, incident and change management, allowing you to focus on strategic initiatives.
Ongoing Optimization: A continual process of refinement and improvement, InterVision uses a Financial Operations (FinOps) approach to optimize cloud service purchases using discounts and architecting systems with the most effective use of services and resources.

Depending on the strategic goals of the client and the desired operational outcome, CMLA can be delivered within three tiers of service:

Self-Managed: Client migration performed by InterVision and transitions operational support to client.
Co-Managed: Client migration performed by InterVision with quarterly cost, architecture and operational reviews and InterVision provides targeted ongoing professional and/or managed services support.
Fully-Managed: Client migration performed by InterVision with ongoing operational support delivered through AWS Managed Services by InterVision (AMS by InterVision)

Organizations who have leveraged CMLA migrate faster and save money. This solution is backed by InterVision’s AWS Partner Network Premier Consulting Partner Status and our list of multiple competency designations. For more information, contact us here.