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Cloud migration offers a unique opportunity for organizations to boost performance, reduce expenses, and foster innovation using AWS. However, achieving successful migration goes beyond mere technical know-how; it requires organizational cohesion, a well-defined strategy, and well-trained personnel. While technical skills are vital, the most pressing challenges often arise from company culture and human factors.

Organizations that have effectively transitioned to the cloud share three fundamental characteristics:

1. Unified senior leadership with a clear vision and aligned expectations.
2. Clearly defined migration goals accompanied by a timeline and actionable next steps.
3. A commitment from the top down to equip teams with the necessary training to operate effectively in the cloud.

AWS Training and Certification provides valuable resources for every phase of migration to help tackle common obstacles and expedite your transition. In this blog post, we will outline these resources, arming your organization with the critical knowledge needed to manage your IT infrastructure proficiently and confidently.

Assessment Phase

Every cloud migration commences with a thorough understanding of your existing IT portfolio, encompassing applications, workloads, and data. During the assessment phase, organizations engage in several essential initiatives: identifying business goals, determining suitable migration strategies (ranging from simple rehosting to comprehensive refactoring), recognizing technical requirements and challenges, and estimating costs and potential savings.

Frequent challenges include a lack of awareness regarding the over 200 AWS services available for designing a destination infrastructure, insufficient alignment or buy-in on a migration strategy, and unclear dependencies of existing systems. To address these issues, AWS offers the following training resources:

• AWS Technical Essentials provides a thorough introduction to AWS products, services, and solutions, helping technical teams grasp migration possibilities.
• AWS Cloud Essentials for Business Leaders is a complimentary course that can stimulate informed discussions on migration options with line of business professionals, IT leaders, and executives.

By offering both technical and business-oriented training options, AWS empowers organizations to cultivate the cross-functional expertise necessary for a comprehensive and effective assessment phase.

Mobilization Phase

The mobilization phase involves assembling the required resources, tools, and processes to facilitate effective and efficient cloud migrations. Once the assessment is complete, preparations for both the organization and the technical environment can begin.

Common challenges in this phase include a lack of experience with migration tools and uncertainty surrounding cloud environment configurations. To counter these challenges, we recommend the following steps:

• Form a core team responsible for overseeing migration efforts.
• Create a detailed migration plan outlining timelines, milestones, and key deliverables.
• Establish the cloud environment and ensure correct and secure configurations.
• Initiate pilot migrations of applications to test your cloud migration strategy before a full-scale implementation.

To successfully execute a migration, the core migration team can utilize the following AWS Training resources to enhance their skills on relevant migration technologies:

• AWS Migration Essentials helps stakeholders across all roles learn methodologies for discovering, planning, executing, and tracking migrations using AWS tools and services.
• Migration Foundations Knowledge Badge Readiness Path offers a valuable resource for technical leaders to learn how to streamline and accelerate AWS Cloud migrations, including courses, knowledge checks, self-paced labs, and a knowledge badge assessment.

Migrate and Modernize Phase

This phase entails the actual transition of applications, workloads, and data. It builds upon the planning and preparation conducted in earlier phases. However, common challenges during this phase include optimizing application performance, scaling effectively, managing costs, and adhering to security and compliance best practices.

To ensure success in this phase, follow these steps:

• Leverage insights and lessons learned from pilot migrations to scale applications and workloads.
• Optimize application architecture to fully utilize cloud-centric features and services.
• Continuously monitor performance, security, and costs of your new cloud environment, adjusting as needed.
• Embrace continuous improvement by adopting new cloud technologies and capabilities as they emerge. This phase is ongoing, as persistent enhancement is crucial to cloud transformation. After migrating, you can begin modernization efforts to optimize your infrastructure for AWS Cloud, unlocking techniques such as serverless computing and dynamic resource allocation.

Optional trainings relevant during this phase include:

• Approach to Mainframe Migration and Modernization, a free course that introduces the value of migrating mainframe applications and outlines methodologies for performing such migrations.
• Getting Started with AWS Mainframe Modernization Service, a free course aimed at mainframe practitioners and administrators preparing to migrate and modernize mainframe applications.

Next Steps

Achieving success in cloud migration necessitates a continuous commitment to learning and development at all organizational levels. After the initial migration, ongoing training is vital for ensuring that your internal engineering team can maintain and enhance their cloud expertise. This knowledge is essential not only for effectively managing migrated infrastructures but also for leveraging cloud capabilities to drive innovation and modernization initiatives.

Optional AWS Training and Certifications to ensure the ongoing success of your cloud environment include:

• AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, an entry-level certification that provides foundational knowledge of AWS Cloud concepts, services, and terminology for individuals in technical, managerial, sales, or financial roles.
• AWS Skill Builder, offering access to over 600 free courses and learning plans. Enhance your team’s cloud expertise to transform your business and maximize your cloud investment with a Team subscription.

If you are not already connected with an AWS sales specialist, we recommend reaching out to request a consultation. These specialists can assist in planning your migration with relevant tools and inform you of potential funding mechanisms. For further insights on motivation, consider checking out this blog post. Additionally, for those interested in leadership development, this Q&A with author Mark Hannum is a great source. And for an excellent resource on employee experiences, you can refer to this Glassdoor review.