What is on-premises to cloud migration? Strategy and steps

As your business grows, keeping up with on-premises infrastructure can drain time and money. Between scaling servers, maintaining hardware, and running updates, things get complicated fast. 

That’s why so many businesses are ditching physical servers and moving to the cloud. An on-premises to cloud migration can unlock flexibility, global access, and easier management, all while reducing operational overhead.

In this guide, we explain what cloud migration involves and how to ensure a secure transition with minimal disruption.

Why migrate data from on-premises to the cloud?

On-premises infrastructure can be costly to maintain and slow to scale. Expansion often requires new servers, hardware upgrades, and IT resources to support growing workloads. 

Cloud platforms, on the other hand, enable growth on demand. Expanding storage and compute capacity is just a question of adjusting your subscription or requesting additional resources from your service provider.

Cloud servers also come with global accessibility. No matter where your employees are located, they can access the same data at the click of a button. Several apps, such as analytics engines and AI-driven platforms, can also connect to the cloud directly, streamlining vendor ecosystems.

You’ll also receive regulatory and compliance support. Since cloud environments receive automatic updates and feature enterprise-grade security and audit-ready monitoring, they reduce the regulatory burden that normally falls to IT teams.

Types of cloud migration

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to cloud migration. The right strategy depends on what you’re moving and why. 

Whether you're shifting your entire infrastructure, modernizing key applications, or consolidating data sources, each type of migration comes with its own considerations for performance, security, and governance. Tools like Fivetran can help by automating data movement (including initial migrations and ongoing data integration) and supporting compliance requirements, so you can maintain data quality without adding overhead.

To choose the right path forward, it helps to understand the main migration varieties and what each one involves. Here are three of the most common types of migration.

Infrastructure migration

Infrastructure migration is the transfer of your underlying data system architecture to the cloud, including servers, network components, and storage components like data warehouses. For teams looking to reduce operational overhead, an infrastructure migration eliminates the need for manual on-premises infrastructure management.

Application migration

Migrating an application to the cloud involves moving software away from your local servers. Some apps will require refactoring or tweaking to work with the cloud environment, but modern apps are likely already compatible, meaning you’ll only need to replatform them to take advantage of cloud-native features.

Data migration

A data migration moves your files, databases, and unstructured data to the cloud. Moving everything in batches rather than all at once, or using strategies like change data capture (CDC), can help you avoid server downtime or interruption.

On-prem to cloud migration steps

Due to the scale of the move, migrating from on-premises architecture to the cloud often requires the careful coordination of multiple departments. Here’s an outline of the steps you should follow in a cloud migration project plan.

1. Assess your current infrastructure and workloads

Before beginning the migration, catalog your existing systems and identify any dependencies and licensing constraints you need to work around. Prioritize simple workloads that are easy to migrate first while developing a long-term strategy for more complex moves. A structured plan helps your team gain momentum and confidence as you carry out the project.

3. Define your cloud migration goals and attach KPIs

Document the specific outcomes you want from the migration. Whether your goal is to lower infrastructure operating costs or improve performance, attach key performance indicators (KPIs) so you can measure whether the move hit the mark post-migration. Clear objectives also keep your teams aligned throughout the migration process. 

3. Choose the right cloud provider and architecture for you

Depending on your needs, reviewing what cloud providers like Microsoft Azure and AWS have to offer can help you find the best option for you. Be sure to also consider your existing data architecture, including extract, load, transform (ELT) and extract, transform, load (ETL) pipelines, workloads, and tool integrations.

4. Plan your data and application migration

Assess every dataset and application individually, considering governance requirements and how downtime without access to that app or group of files might impact your organization. Understanding what you’re migrating helps you plan how to move everything in the least disruptive and most efficient way.

A migration tool like Fivetran can streamline the process. Fivetran’s fully managed connectors and hybrid deployment model simplify secure data transfer while helping you maintain full regulatory compliance.

5. Execute the migration in phases

For anything other than very small moves, migrating your entire ecosystem at once will be extremely disruptive. Servers will be offline throughout, so no one will be able to access the essential systems they need to do their job. And if something goes wrong, the whole migration could fail. Batch migrations reduce overall downtime and allow data engineers to validate workloads as they move. A phased approach also allows for iterative adjustments throughout the process.

6. Test, validate, and optimize post-migration

After the move, be sure to verify that everything made it to the cloud successfully and check that metadata, security settings, and permissions are all intact. If you notice missing datasets, run diagnostics to find gaps in your process and remedy them for future migrations.

Benefits of moving from on-premises to the cloud

Moving from on-premises to the cloud removes the constraints of high-maintenance legacy architecture and delivers scalability, enterprise-grade security, and performance improvements. Here are a few of the main benefits you’ll see after migrating to the cloud:

• Lower infrastructure and maintenance costs: Using a cloud platform means no longer needing to purchase and maintain physical hardware and servers. With cloud environments, you only need to pay for what you use, streamlining your data architecture.
• Faster scalability and agility: Physical servers take up space, and installation and maintenance are time-consuming. With cloud environments, scaling up or down is as simple as contacting your service provider.
• Improved disaster recovery and uptime: Major cloud providers must adhere to service level agreements (SLAs) that promise a certain uptime rate. To stay in compliance and enhance performance, they distribute their workloads across the globe. If a local server goes down, a fail-safe secondary node will take over, keeping you online 24/7.

On-premises to cloud migration strategy challenges

Here are some common issues you may encounter when making the jump to the cloud, and how to mitigate them:

• Application compatibility issues: Legacy applications often use outdated operating systems or unusual hardware configurations that don’t work with cloud infrastructure. Identifying these blockers early will help you rearchitect or refactor without complications.
• Security and compliance gaps: If permissions aren’t properly migrated, moving to a new operational environment can introduce security risks. Use a concurrent security migration plan to move your security configurations over at the same time as your data and applications.
• Can be expensive with poor planning: Choosing an ill-suited cloud provider or failing to plan for server downtime can be costly. Keep costs down with a well-drafted strategy that considers provisioning limits, active monitoring, and resource rightsizing.

How Fivetran supports secure on-premises to cloud migration

Migrations can be stressful, but they don’t need to be. Fivetran helps you migrate your data, apps, and systems to the cloud in a secure, governed, and monitored manner. By automating extraction from on-premises sources, encrypting data in transit, and enforcing governance policies, the platform supports you through every step of the process. 

With Fivetran’s hybrid deployment model, you can keep your most sensitive workloads on-premises while using Fivetran’s managed SaaS platform for schema management, orchestration, and monitoring. 

For an automated and compliance-first solution, and to find out about Fivetran’s extensibility management, request a demo today.

FAQs

What’s the best on-premises to cloud migration strategy?

The best strategy for cloud migration is one that aligns with your business objectives. As part of your planning, evaluate your current infrastructure and the datasets and applications you plan to move. Typically, this involves starting small, moving files in batches, and validating that everything is intact after the move, including permissions and metadata.

How long does a cloud migration take?

The length of a cloud migration depends on the strategy you use. Batch migrations typically take a few weeks or even a few months, depending on the number of files, apps, and systems being moved. Large-scale enterprises with complex data architectures should expect a migration to take significantly longer than smaller organizations.

How does AI support cloud migration? 

AI can support the migration process by scanning existing workloads and flagging incompatibilities. It can also optimize resource allocation to help make the move as smooth as possible.

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