Benjamin Franklin stated that “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” Nothing could be truer than when it comes to cloud migration. Migrating to Azure can be a complex and sometimes daunting task, but having the right cloud adoption framework in place helps create the right roadmap to clarify what needs to happen, when.

In fact, at Quisitive, we believe a cloud adoption framework for Azure is quintessential for long term success, both when migrating to the cloud and effectively operating once there. It makes sure you’re properly prepared.

After completing an assessment, the first step is to craft a cloud adoption framework, which helps to guide and capture the decisions that will be used throughout the cloud adoption process. A part of our OnRamp to Azure approach, a cloud adoption framework serves as the governance foundation for companies to not only get to the cloud, but effectively operate once there.

A cloud adoption framework is critical for defining policies, establishing best practices and standards for how to leverage the cloud for applications, services, virtual machines, for managing change, and for evaluating and potentially abandoning legacy practices. This last point is particularly important.

Out with the old

Many companies operate under the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. The problem with this approach is oftentimes existing practices might be flawed, outdated or — to quote the old saying — “broke,” without anyone realizing it.

Lifting and shifting legacy practices when migrating to the cloud may mean there’s an inherent lack of governance and enforcement that could result in unnecessary security risks or events. This could be the result of a lack of understanding in terms of what data lives where, or its classification, how certain workloads were deployed, etc. Relying on all these issues can lead to cost overruns and waste valuable time.

By identifying and auditing existing governance and controls that may or may not be ideal once in the cloud and course-correcting on these processes, you’re saving yourself from these types of issues in the long run.

Streamlining the process

Eliminating these types of issues is much easier if there’s a framework to follow. It’s why we’ve streamlined the process with our OnRamp to Azure program, a holistic and comprehensive approach to migrating to Microsoft Azure.

OnRamp to Azure divides the migration process into a series of phases: planning/foundation, and migration.

The first phase lays a foundation for the people, processes and technology involved in the migration by leveraging Quisitive’s best-practice cloud adoption framework optimized for migrating and operating in the cloud. Through the streamlined onboarding process, Quisitive walks customers through the necessary decisions to establish their cloud presence, which Quisitive will deploy as their Landing Zone for their migrated workloads.

The second phase is when migration occurs. Because the framework has been constructed and adhered to in the first phase, the workload migration will land in Azure aligned to best practices

Learn more about OnRamp to Azure here.