The Solution
As a principle, Transparity follows the guidance set out within Microsoft’s Cloud Adoption Framework. This framework encourages the consideration of several topics over various stages to ensure that standards are aligned with industry-recognised best practices. This project focused on Plan, Ready and Adopt.
Phase 1: Planning
Key actions in the planning phase included:
- Understanding the digital estate and its components. Rationalisation was done across 40+ servers. A large number were to be decommissioned, some were to be replaced and finally, some were to be rehosted in Azure. For these, migration groups and waves were determined.
- Creating organisational alignment, aligning the new operating model, responsibilities and ownership. With this, responsibilities were aligned between Transparity and the SHW IT team.
- Defining skills readiness – here a lack of internal Azure skills was found and Transparity provided the route for upskilling, recommending courses and exams for each of the relevant team members.
- Establishing a cloud adoption plan aligned with business outcomes. This pulled together all of the information from the previous steps and then added timelines for the migration waves, in this case, pilot and production waves.
Phase 2: Cloud Foundation & Landing Zone Deployment
Building upon the meticulous planning phase, the next step was to establish a robust cloud foundation and deploy a comprehensive landing zone. This phase was critical in laying the groundwork for a seamless and secure cloud transition, steps included:
- Validated project requirements and gathered technical requirements.
- Designed and deployed core Azure resources, including Azure Policy Controls, Security Controls, and a Secure Networking Topology.
- Configured logging, monitoring, and auditing mechanisms to ensure visibility and compliance.
Phase 3: Workload Migration
With the Azure Cloud Foundation and Landing Zone now fully in place, the cloud migration itself was next. First a pilot wave, then a production wave with a lift and shift migration of the servers into Azure followed by user testing and file migration to Azure Files.
