Cloud migration services - move on-premises legacy systems to the cloud
Moving on-premises legacy systems and applications to the cloud can seem daunting and a massive undertaking for many organisations. Even though the cloud offers incredible flexibility in design choices. Our cloud migration services include a proven and consistent methodology for adopting cloud technologies to ensure successful business transformation objectives.
Organisations have traditionally been held back by the challenge of growing their information infrastructure. However, moving to the cloud adds tangible value to their outlook. Our cloud migration services help you realise the benefits of moving to the cloud.
Improved scalability – The cloud offers an almost infinite scale in terms of compute, storage and network capacity. Organisations can scale up or down easily and quickly. Growing organisations require more space in a cloud environment to cope with increasing demands.
Global availability – Modern organisations require data that has a global reach. Organisations that rely on centralised data centres often find global expansion difficult. Features and adaptability of cloud technologies are not dependent on location.
Security – One of the primary misgivings organisations have when migrating to the cloud is security. On-premises data centres allow for direct control over security measures that comply with company standards. With cloud technology, you maintain peace of mind with access to 24/7 unified security management across hybrid cloud networks.
Disaster recovery – With cybersecurity and risk management remaining at the forefront of IT and business, disaster recovery is vital for cloud services. Cloud technologies prioritise disaster recovery through exceptional coverage in regional and global fail-over options.
Cost savings and expenditure – Cost savings continue to be one of the main drivers behind migrating to cloud services. For example, Azure reserved instances and bring your own licences achieve up to 72% savings compared with pay-as-you-go pricing. Organisations can also choose a hybrid option and maintain their on-premises data centres while reaping the benefits of flexibility and backup security in the Azure cloud.
Cloud migration services – full cloud migration life cycle
Incremental’s cloud migration services include full life cycle support for cloud and infrastructure, from consulting to migration, ongoing support and governance.
Incremental is a Microsoft gold partner for Cloud Platform, Cloud Productivity, Data Centre, Application Development and Independent Software Vendor (ISV), with deep expertise across Azure and other cloud platforms.
We have a large team of Azure Certified Cloud Consultants and Cloud Architects ready to help you with your journey to the cloud. They are on-hand to assist you in updating your processes, replacing your existing solutions and supporting your digital transformation.
Cloud Readiness
Migrating your legacy systems to the cloud can feel challenging and a huge step. You may be wondering if the cloud is the next logical step. However, it does not have to be an all or nothing decision. You may benefit from moving some systems to the cloud just now and wait to migrate other systems in the future.
Incremental will work with you on your cloud strategy to determine if a move to the cloud is right for you. Our Cloud Readiness Assessments provide you with a gap analysis of your organisation and a list of applications that can be moved to the cloud smoothly, following a cloud assessment process. As cloud agility and elasticity are increasingly being sought after, an organisational review and cloud migration assessment serves an invaluable function for achieving these goals.
Our cloud readiness assessments cover enterprise, data and infrastructure, custom applications and Office 365 migrations.
6-day Cloud Migration Assessment
Incremental performs a full 6-day Cloud Migration Assessment of your current IT infrastructure, network and existing applications. As part of our assessment, we provide you with a full audit of your existing position and a recommended future position.
1-day Cloud Readiness Assessment
Our 1-day Cloud Readiness Assessment reviews your current IT infrastructure and supports your future organisational plans while assessing the impact they have on your IT infrastructure. You receive a cloud migration report detailing our proposed cloud approach.
Data and infrastructure migration
Cloud Migration takes many forms. We support you on this journey and help you avoid the pitfalls along the way. Our services for infrastructure migration include:
- Cloud migration and deployment strategy and design services
- Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) migration, where you run your services that have no equivalent cloud service in Microsoft Azure
- Upgrades to products where there is a cloud equivalent service (e.g., email, document management and audio/video conferencing are all available as an Office 365 service).
- All aspects of Microsoft SQL Server: Application development and DBA for on-premises SQL Server and modernising to Azure – both Azure SQL Database (Azure PaaS) and Azure Virtual Machines (Azure IaaS).
Enterprise
We support legacy Dynamics upgrades and have deep expertise with enterprise applications and Office 365. Our services include:
- Cloud migration and deployment – we analyse your on-premises solutions and develop a migration and deployment plan
- Virtualisation – we provide you with the performance needed by understanding the requirements of your enterprise system
- Upgrades to Dynamics 365 – we perform a gap analysis and aim to use as much of the standard product to make ongoing support easier
- Citrix implementations – enterprise applications need to be accessed through a client running on Microsoft Windows. We support and upgrade Citrix infrastructure or design and deploy a new on-premises, hybrid or Citrix cloud solution.
Custom apps
Upgrading custom applications can be a daunting task but we thrive on taking complex legacy applications and making them work better for you.
The services we offer here include:
- Bespoke migration services – we migrate your bespoke applications to the cloud
- Cloud migration / deployment – moving your application to the cloud
- Citrix implementation – if your application needs to be accessed in the cloud using a traditional windows client application, we help by using Citrix to help deliver your custom application to your users in a seamless manner
Office 365
- Office 365 migrations including Email, Skype, SharePoint and OneDrive for Business
- Futureproof key business processes through replacing on-premises InfoPath with PowerApps
- Communicate and collaborate effectively internally and externally with modern SharePoint sites and Teams
- Improve team productivity and collaboration with Microsoft Teams
Deployment options
The right cloud deployment model helps you gain a competitive edge in the market. Through this, you have access to IT resources and services that can make your organisation flexible and agile, both in terms of volume and scale.
Incremental works with you to help determine the best cloud deployment option for your business needs. We work with organisations on 3 main deployment options for migrating to the cloud: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
IaaS is a computing infrastructure managed over the internet. IaaS scales up and down with demand, letting you pay only for what you use. IaaS avoids the expense and complexity of buying and managing your own servers and other data centre infrastructure. Each resource is offered as a separate service component, and you only need to rent a particular one for as long as you need it.
A cloud service provider, like Azure, manages the infrastructure, while you purchase, install, configure and manage your own software – operating systems, middleware and applications.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Like IaaS, PaaS includes infrastructure – servers, storage and networking – but also middleware, development tools, BI services, database management systems and more.
PaaS is designed to support the complete web application life cycle. PaaS allows you to avoid the expense of buying and managing software licenses, the underlying application infrastructure and middleware, container orchestrators or development tools and other resources. You manage the applications and services that you develop, and the cloud service provider typically manages everything else.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
SaaS is a software solution you purchase as pay-as-you-go from a cloud service provider. You rent the use of an app for your organisation, and your users connect to it over the Internet.
All of the underlying infrastructure, middleware, app software and app data are located in the service provider’s data centre. The service provider manages the hardware and software, and with the appropriate service agreement, will ensure the availability and the security of the app and your data as well. SaaS allows your organisation to get up and running quickly with an app, at minimal upfront cost.
Cloud migration services and methodology
Incremental cloud migration methodology provides organisations with assurance, guidance and governance, to help shape technology, business, and people strategies for driving desired business outcomes during the cloud adoption effort.
Our cloud migration methodology aligns to various stages and iterations of the typical cloud adoption lifecycle, ensuring easy access to the right guidance at the right time.
Govern and manage
Effective governance runs across our entire cloud migration methodology. We align corporate policy to tangible risks, mitigated through policy, process and cloud-based governance tooling.
We also help you to align people and teams to deliver proper cloud operations and adoption. Cloud adoption will not succeed without well-organised people. Successful cloud adoption is the result of suitably skilled people doing the appropriate types of work, in alignment with clearly defined business goals, and a well-managed environment.
Define strategy
We help you to document your business strategy efficiently. With our approach, you drive adoption efforts that capture targeted business value. You then map your cloud adoption strategy to specific cloud capabilities and business strategies to reach your desired state of transformation.
Plan
When technical implementation is aligned with clear business objectives, it is much easier to measure and align success across multiple cloud implementation efforts, regardless of technical decisions. Our planning approach captures prioritised tasks to drive adoption efforts. The cloud adoption plan then maps to the metrics and motivations defined in the cloud adoption strategy.
Ready
This part of our Cloud Migration Methodology involves creating a landing zone. A landing zone hosts the workloads that you plan to build in the cloud or migrate to the cloud. We also help you to prepare your business, culture, people, and environment for the coming changes. Our approach leads to success in each endeavour and accelerates implementation and change projects.
Adopt – migrate and innovate
At this stage, we ensure suitable implementation of desired changes, across IT and business processes.
During the innovation stage applications, hosted on-premises, can be re-written to your requirements. Our approach goes beyond ‘lifting and shifting’ your applications and systems from on-premises to the cloud. We focus on new capabilities made possible by cloud operating models.
Application Management Services
Incremental’s Application Management Services are designed to support you to achieve your core objectives. Our service ensures you get the business management information you need to understand your business entirely.
We keep your system performing to the standards you need by providing you with scalable and secure infrastructure. We limit any unnecessary customisations to ensure smooth and affordable upgrades are available when required.
We also provide training and support to ensure high user adoption and continuous improvement across your organisation.
These services are offered as self-contained work packages or as a fully managed service.
Lifetime Management
Incremental Group provides Application Management, Support and Upgrades of Dynamics 365 for Operations and Dynamics AX solutions.
Our application management capability is fully ITIL aligned, 24*7*365 and delivered from the UK. It is available whether we implement your Dynamics solution or if you are seeking to replace your existing support partner.
SQL Server – Azure PaaS, Azure IaaS, and on-premises
Incremental Group is a Microsoft gold partner for Data Centre, Application Development, and Independent Software Vendor (ISV), with a track record working with SQL Server and Azure.
Our experienced team of consultants support all your SQL database needs from planning through development, performance tuning and integration, to ongoing DBA support.
SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 end-of-support
On July 9th, Microsoft will end extended support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2. For users of these SQL Server versions, that means the end of regular security updates. It is critical to avoid the challenges and vulnerabilities caused by end-of-support.
Upgrading SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 should be seen as an opportunity to innovate and future-proof your infrastructure approach.
Our expertise covers all aspects of Microsoft SQL Server: Application development and DBA for on-premises SQL Server and modernising to Azure – both Azure SQL Database (Azure PaaS) and Azure Virtual Machines (Azure IaaS). We provide expert help in:
- SQL cloud migration advice and assistance
- Performance tuning
- SQL Server health checks
- SQL Server database administration
- Data security and encryption
- Transact-SQL
- Data warehouse design and implementation
- SQL Server Reporting Services and Mobile Report Publisher
- Power BI development
Moving to the latest on-premises SQL Server
SQL Server continues to deliver industry-leading capabilities, and by migrating to the latest versions, such as SQL Server 2017 or 2019, you help your organisation remain compliant, improve performance, reliability, and security. The latest SQL Server versions offer benefits such as:
- Intelligence over any data: Deliver insights over structured and unstructured data
- A choice of language and platforms: Build modern applications on-premises and in the cloud, on Windows, Linux, and Docker containers.
- Industry-leading performance: Breakthrough scalability, performance, and availability
- Advanced security features: SQL Server has been the least vulnerable database over the last 8 years in the NIST vulnerabilities database
- Make faster, better decisions: Power BI Report Server gives your users access to Power BI reports, and the ERP capabilities of SQL Server Reporting Services
Move to Azure SQL Database (Azure PaaS)
Azure SQL Database combines the rich SQL Server surface area with the operational and financial benefits of intelligent, fully-managed service. Customers can migrate their SQL Server databases without rearchitecting their apps. With Azure SQL Database, you are responsible for your applications and data, but Microsoft manages everything else. They will manage the operating systems and availability, and you will only pay for what you use.
For near 100% compatibility with the latest on-premises Enterprise edition of SQL Server, the Azure SQL managed instance deployment model allows existing SQL Server customers to lift and shift their on-premises applications to the cloud with minimal application and database changes. This is the fastest way to take advantage of the Azure SQL PaaS platform without worrying about application compatibility issues.
Move to Azure Virtual Machines (Azure IaaS)
In the case of Azure Virtual Machines, Microsoft Azure offers virtual machines to provide you with cloud-based server resources. You decide how many servers you need, as well as their capacity. You control the instance and are responsible for the operation system. With just one click, you can access more servers or change the capacity of existing ones depending on your requirements.
Hybrid approach
Migrate your data to Azure SQL Database (Azure PaaS) or Azure Virtual Machines (Azure IaaS) for cost savings.
With SQL Server 2017 or 2019, your organisation has the opportunity to stretch its data from on-premises to the Azure cloud, or a hybrid of both. One benefit of doing this is the potential for significant cost savings, where cloud storage is largely more cost-effective than locally managing data and storing it on-premises.
You also benefit from tools such as Azure Data Services, which has a variety of data management and analytics tools for all your data needs, whether it is structured or unstructured data.
“Citrix was key in providing global access to our Dynamics AX ERP system and Incremental Group’s depth of knowledge on all areas of Citrix and Microsoft technologies proved invaluable in delivering a fast and reliable end-user experience.”
Steven Matthew
VP Information Technology, Proserv