Migrate and modernize intelligently with Google Cloud Migration Center

Organizations continue to adopt the public cloud to deliver better business and IT outcomes¹. However, migration — and modernization — is a complex, multifaceted challenge which involves understanding the current state of infrastructure and applications to determine what the future state looks like and what it would take to get to the future state with multiple stakeholders using myriad tools, processes, and implementation partners.

Daniel Dill, Senior Vice President, Application Operations and Cloud Delivery at Global Payments Inc., summarizes a common sentiment amongst organizations contemplating migration projects: “Our cloud migration approach centered around quickly exiting high cost colo data centers and using those savings to fund the cloud costs and data center consolidation.” 

Working with those goals and challenges in mind, last week at Google Cloud Next ‘22, we announced the Preview of Google Cloud Migration Center, a new Google first-party service that is available in the Google Cloud console. Migration Center is designed to streamline your cloud journey with intelligent, data-driven insights and actionable recommendations. This will help you make critical decisions on the optimal migration and modernization pathways for your organization faster and with greater confidence. 

With Migration Center, we’ll bring all our planning, migration, and modernization tooling together in one centralized experience within the Google Cloud console with a unified data platform. Built on a new scalable, and extensible data foundation, Migration Center provides the connective tissue between user interfaces and APIs for Google Cloud or partner/ISV-provided discovery, analysis, planning, and migration tools.

One of our customers, Viant technology, an Irvine, CA based Adtech company, had to move quickly when they were informed their data center location was closing. They used the tools and programs within Migration Center, and their story encapsulates the value of end-to-end streamlining, a key goal of Migration Center.

“We had 6 months to migrate a complex environment comprising 600 virtual machines (VMs), 200+TB of data, 80+ MSSQL databases, and 100 physical servers from on-premises to the cloud,” explains Linh Chung, CIO of Viant. “Google Cloud provided discovery and assessment through the Rapid Assessment & Migration Program (RAMP), giving us a complete inventory to migration plan within 24 hours. We even identified places where cost and redundancy could be cut by determining which VMs were necessary to migrate and which could be turned off.” 

“We were also extremely fortunate to have found Slalom,” Linh continues. “They hit the ground running and were exceptionally knowledgeable in all aspects of the migration process. With their help, we were able to complete the entire migration to Google Cloud with an astonishing three weeks to spare.”

Migration Center is also a collaborative effort with inputs from our design partners that include both global and regional partners like Accenture, Cognizant, HCL, Infosys, Maven Wave, an Atos Company, SADA, SoftChoice, Tata Consultancy Services, Thoughtworks and Wipro.

Miles Ward, Chief Technology Officer at SADA, reflects on working with Google Cloud on Migration Center: “We are extremely excited to add customer value with Migration Center to speed up adoption of Google Cloud and make it easier for our customers to move large, complicated workloads to their new location on Google Cloud.” 

Some key highlights of this service in the Preview phase include:

• Console-integrated, one-stop portal for all things migration and modernization

• Quick estimates for running your workloads in Google Cloud with minimal user input. These estimates will include right-sizing and the right mix of Google Cloud infrastructure and are built on editable assumptions from actual customer migrations

• Easier initiation of discovery and assessment with in-console reports for asset inventory, delivering insights and best path recommendations for migrating to VMs, containers, databases, dedicated hardware, and managed services

• Prescriptive guidance documentation based on best practices for migration planning and execution, distilled from real-world migrations done by Google Professional Services

• Migration execution launchpad for kickstarting your actual migrations with proven tools such as Migrate to Containers, the Database Migration Service, and Migrate to Virtual Machines — which recently introduced a preview of migrating from AWS as a source. 

• Common API surface for customers and partners to enable ecosystem integrations

Speaking about some of what’s included within Migration Center, John Wick, a Senior Manager for Cloud Transformation and Architecture at Accenture, said that “Migrate to Virtual Machines was reliable and able to scale and concurrently migrate large applications while meeting our client's strict requirements for minimal downtime. The Migrate to Virtual Machines interface is simple and easy for my team to use for migrations”. 

Jason Foa, Cloud Platforms Practice Lead at Maven Wave, an Atos Company, echoed similar sentiments, stating that “Migrate for Virtual Machines allows us to help our customers quickly migrate a significant number of workloads in a short time and in a secure way that maintains business continuity. This allows our customers to take advantage of the benefits of Google Cloud rapidly."

We also recently announced several exciting updates to our comprehensive Rapid Assessment & Migration Program (RAMP). RAMP is a holistic framework based on tangible customer TCO and ROI analyses that supports our customers’ journey to Google Cloud. We announced new assessment and consumption packages delivered via our ecosystem of partners who have completed their cloud migration specialization. You can learn more about it by reading this blog. In addition to this, we have introduced the Customer Onboarding Program to migrate qualified workloads with Google Cloud’s world-class Technical Onboarding Center — at no charge.

With the Migration Center, our goal is to put what you need for migration and modernization at the tip of your fingers, so that you can reduce the time, energy, and cost of these crucial projects. As you navigate your journey to the cloud, Migration Center and Google Cloud are here to help. Start using Migration Center today, or to learn more, check out our web pages for Migration Center and Rapid Discovery and Assessment Program (RAMP), or sign up today for your free discovery and assessment.

^{The authors would like to thank Tom Nikl, Bobby Allen, Jason Joel, Tatiana Karmanova, Armaan Choudhary, and Nishant Kulkarni for their contributions to this blog.}

^{1. Flexera 2022 State of the Cloud Report}