As you may be aware, recent changes that followed VMware’s acquisition by Broadcom have nearly every user reevaluating their technology strategy. Around half a million organizations are estimated to be looking at their options.

We recently explored strategies to tackle and avoid VMware challenges after migration. Today, we are looking at how VMware customers can make a strategic plan around migration.

A Structured Approach Aligned to Priorities

Whether you are an experienced consultant in cloud/IT solutions or simply an organization exploring your options, it is critical to take a structured approach. A structured approach will minimize your risk throughout the process. This boils down to:

1. Assessing your current estate

2. Forming a detailed plan

3. Executing the move systematically

This approach will align with your priorities—you might be up against a figurative wall with costs, security, or compliance issues—which must be addressed in the process.

At Matilda Cloud, we offer best-in-class automation tools to improve the outcomes of these stages. Whether you are going with a more manual approach or using automation, it is best to keep a structured approach in your journey.

Assessing the Current Estate and Needs

We are living in a time of growing complexity in terms of technology solutions. In our experience, most organizations have only limited knowledge of their current IT and cloud environments. In short, they don’t know what they don’t know.

Before you can identify an ideal strategy, it is critical to first gain a basic understanding of your current setup. Here’s what you will need…

• Inventory of Assets: Catalog of all apps, servers, databases, and other assets in use

• High-Level Risks: Identify major areas of risk related to cost, compliance, security, and operational continuity so that you can prioritize solutions

• Cost Estimations: An estimate of current costs and projected costs for target clouds

These insights will help you form a high-level strategy to inform the broader plan for migration and modernization.

Be warned: manual approaches can only get you so far and at a snail’s pace. That is why we introduced a quick automated assessment tool, RAPID Assessment, that provides all the insights above in automated reports in days, not weeks.

This is our recommended approach to quickly determine your best path forward, laying the groundwork for a more detailed plan.

Forming a Detailed Plan

Now that you have your critical priorities outlined and an understanding of your estate, it’s time to conduct an in-depth assessment to support detailed planning.

Detailed planning lets you proactively avoid costly mistakes down the line. To do this, you should first conduct a deep assessment of your environment with an application-centric approach, and then establish the migration plan.

Application-Centric Approach

At Matilda Cloud, we strongly believe in an application-centric approach that prioritizes understanding the unique needs and interdependencies of each application within your environment. This approach will ensure that migrations are seamless and deployments are optimized for performance and cost efficiency.

This approach requires the following details before you can finalize a migration plan…

• Comprehensive Inventory & Dependency Mapping: An in-depth inventory of all assets, applications, services, and infrastructure and their interdependencies will make it easy to avoid disruptions and costly mistakes during and after the move.

• Performance Utilization Analysis: Knowing performance and utilization details will identify bottlenecks and optimization opportunities prior to migrating.

• Tailored Migration Strategy: Your migration must align to your priorities and maintain structured move groups to avoid downtime.

• Comprehensive Risk Mitigation: Identifying potential risks will help maintain compliance and security during the transition.

An application-centric assessment will ultimately support your business objectives and enhance your overall operational effectiveness in the long run, helping you avoid costly mistakes and problem solving later on.

Our Matilda Discover tool is a state-of-the-art assessment tool that automates all the items above for an application-centric understanding of any IT or cloud estate.

Migration Planning

With your comprehensive understanding in place, it’s time to create a detailed migration plan that minimizes downtime and continuity, and ensures security and data integrity during migration.

We recommend using automated tooling at this stage that integrates with your assessment output and ensures adherence to best practices like well-architected frameworks and CIS standards.

• Timeline: Develop a detailed timeline accounting for each phase of the migration that considers the complexity of your environment. Be sure to allocate sufficient time for each task, including testing and execution.

• Design the Target Architecture: Ensure the architecture for the target environment meets your strategic goals. Leverage industry best practices for cloud deployments to ensure scalability, reliability, and performance optimization.

• Governance Frameworks: Establish clear guidelines and governance policies for compliance and security throughout the process. These pertain to data handling, access controls, and monitoring to minimize risks.

These planning details will ensure that your migration strategy is robust and aligned to your business objectives. If you want to automate over 80% of these steps, we recommend you utilize our automated orchestration and migration tools.

Matilda Cloud’s Phased Approach

A structured approach to VMware migration will lead to a successful transition. That is why we have engineered our tooling to align perfectly with the critical phases of our customer’s journey. Our integrated tools help you avoid costly mistakes throughout the process so that you’re not stuck fighting new fires after you’ve migrated.

Whether you’re leveraging our advanced automation or going with a more manual approach, maintaining a clear, methodical approach will help you achieve your migration and overall technology goals effectively.