# The Cloud Migration Journey

The cloud can be a confusing place, and whilst everyone seems to be talking about it the reality is many companies don't know where to start when it comes to utilising these new services. The benefits speak for themselves (see our [estimated cost saver](/content/services/cloud-migration.html#costcomparison/index.html) below), and our consultants can help you identify if a new data or technology solution is the way forward for your company.

Our experienced consultants and architects can advise on the appropriate strategy based on your cloud journey:

- **Rehost or Lift and Shift** - For businesses migrating off traditional on-premise servers and data centres who want to migrate within a short amount of time, rehost may be the right choice.
- **Replatform or Lift, Tinker and Shift** - Similar to rehost, but optimisations are made to the environment during the migration.
- **Repurchase or Drop and Shop** - Moving to a different product.
- **Refactoring / Re-architecting** - Re-imagining how data and applications are architected and developed, typically using cloud-native features.
- **Retire** - Get rid of.

## Example Cost Comparison

### Database Migration

Switching to the cloud can remove costly up-front, maintenance and licence fees. The below comparison is a simple example of where cost savings could be made when migrating a single database function to the cloud. Comparison is an example only and based on published vendor costs at time of writing. Unknown operating costs, compute/memory/usage requirements and business case will impact figures.

#### On Premise

*On premise hardware, running SQL server standard edition with associated licences for 20 users.*

- **$766** per month

- Server e.g. Dell EMC PowerEdge - $6K or $100 pm (5 yr)
  - SQL Server 2017 Standard - $1380 or $115 pm (1 yr)
  - SQL Server 2017 CAL licence - $540 pm for 20 users (1 yr)
  - Windows Server 2016 - $12.50 pm (1 yr)
  - Server space, cooling, administration, support, utilities, servicing - $?

#### In Cloud - SQL Server Standard

*AWS hosted Relational Database Service with migrated SQL licences and no database administrator costs*

- **$395** per month

- AWS RDS with similar compute/memory (m4.2 xlarge)
  - Migrate SQL server standard licence across
  - On-demand only database instance available 12 hours per day (60 hours per week)
  - Up to 50GB transfer in and 50GB transfer out per month
  - Up to 50GB general purpose storage per month

#### In Cloud - MySQL

*AWS hosted Relational Database Service with MySQL and no database administrator costs*

- **$263** per month

- AWS RDS with similar compute/memory (m4.2 xlarge)
  - MySQL instance
  - On-demand only database instance available 12 hours per day (60 hours per week)
  - Up to 50GB transfer in and 50GB transfer out per month
  - Up to 50GB general purpose storage per month