The journey to a successful Azure migration

In today’s digital landscape, organisations are increasingly turning to the cloud for scalability, agility and cost savings. Microsoft Azure, a leading cloud platform, offers a robust suite of services for organisations seeking to migrate their workloads.

Flexible and scalable, Azure allows organisations to scale resources up or down, based on demand. Azure’s infrastructure supports a variety of applications, from simple web apps to complex machine learning models, and its focus on security ensures that sensitive data is always protected. Here at Softcat, we ensure that migration to the cloud is simple and straightforward, providing all the support and ongoing advice you need for a successful migration journey in six key steps.

Define your cloud migration goals

Before embarking on your migration journey, it is crucial to understand your motivations and why you are considering a move to the cloud in the first place. Common triggers include data centre exits, cost optimisation, regulatory compliance changes, and the need for increased business agility. With the support of your Softcat Account Manager, Azure Solutions Specialists, Solution Architects and Technical Delivery Consultants, we help you define clear goals which will guide how we help tailor your migration strategy.

The first thing we do is listen to you. Our Azure Solution Specialists will host an initial scoping call to understand your motivations, timelines, budgets, and current infrastructure at a high level. Your Azure Solution Specialist will then ensure the best internal technical resource is aligned, according to your requirements, whether that is someone from the Solutions Design Team or Technical Delivery Team, who will then conduct further discovery at a lower level to really get into the detail of your aims and objectives.

Understand your digital estate Once your goals are defined, the next step is taking stock of your existing on-premises infrastructure, applications, and dependencies. Softcat's Azure Migration Assessment, carried out by our Azure Technical Delivery Consultants, helps assess current workloads by performing discovery of existing infrastructure, providing insights into workload optimisation and dependencies between servers. Our tooling collects essential data, including server configurations, installed applications and performance metrics.

A tailored Migration Report is generated by the Technical Delivery Consultant, who will host a handover session after the assessment period to help you understand and navigate the findings in the report. At this point, you can either conduct migration activities yourself, with your own skilled teams in house, or you can continue to build on your Migration Strategy with the support of Softcat's highly skilled technical teams.

Plan your migration path

Based on the report, the Technical Delivery Consultant will create a bespoke migration plan for you. Some of those recommendations may include lift-and-shift (rehosting), refactoring (replatforming), or rebuilding (rearchitecting) approaches. Each has its merits, depending on your specific needs. Softcat will help you understand the recommendations and decide which is the best approach to take for you to achieve your organisation’s unique goals.

Execute the migration

With a solid plan in place, Softcat Technical Delivery Consultants help execute the migration, either in a phased approach or all at once to suit your organisation. We provide the right support at the right time, and you may be assigned a Project Manager, OCTO (Office of the CTO) specialist, support engineers and additional consultants who will monitor progress, address any issues, and ensure minimal disruptions for you during the transition.

Optimise and monitor

Post-migration is the time to optimise your Azure resources further. This should be done on an ongoing basis to support you well into the future. Your Softcat Azure Specialist will provide guidance on how to leverage Azure Cost Management and Azure Advisor to monitor usage, manage costs, improve security, and enhance performance. Softcat can regularly review your architecture to ensure alignment with best practices.

Softcat has a range of services to support these requirements. These include our FinOps service, called Cloud Fundamentals, designed to provide targeted optimisation recommendations across your cloud environment while having additional specialist support as an overlay.

In addition, Softcat's Managed Services are designed to decrease the complexities of cloud for your organisation, offering a hands-off approach to cloud. Softcat provides a service to cover Patching & Configuration Management, Incident Management & Operations Monitoring (24/7), Service Management, Governance including FinOps, Change & Service Requests, Backup & Recovery.

As an Azure Expert accredited MSP, Softcat has access to a large variety of funding pathways. These cover projects and solutions including Softcat Migration Assessments, Infrastructure and Database Migration, VDI and Azure VMware. Based on the discovery we carry out, Softcat will use the information gathered to apply for Microsoft funding on your behalf and automatically reduce your cost to move to the cloud.

Navigating a successful migration

An Azure migration is a transformative journey that requires careful planning, assessment, and execution. By following these steps with Softcat, organisations can harness the power of Azure to drive innovation, improve efficiency, and stay competitive in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

To find out more, get in touch with your Softcat Account Manager or click here to contact our Sales team.