Cloud adoption

The Adopt methodology shows you how to migrate, modernize, innovate, and relocate workloads in Azure. These four processes align to different phases in the cloud adoption journey. Each phase has distinct goals, solutions, and benefits. This article provides an overview of each process, so you can find the right guidance.

Migrate

Migration entails moving workloads to the cloud or between clouds. You can choose from various types of migrations. The the migration guidance helps you choose the migration strategy that best aligns with your objectives.

• Goals: Meet business demands, exit an on-premises environment, and align with Azure Well-Architected Framework principles.

• Solutions: Adopt cloud solutions based on business needs.

• Key benefits: Improve security, reliability, performance, and operations by using managed solutions. Easily integrate new solutions and design patterns without acquiring, managing, or securing hardware.

When you migrate an enterprise-scale workload to the cloud, you shouldn’t have to develop new business logic. You can perform migration efficiently by using the rehosting approach.

For more information, see Migrate.

Modernize

Modernization enhances existing workloads by improving operations, increasing efficiency, maximizing developer velocity, and reducing the total cost of ownership.

• Goals: Reduce technical debt, modernize applications, and modernize data platforms.

• Solutions: Integrate other services and modify code to meet business goals.

• Key benefits: Optimize cost, security, reliability, performance, and operations for increased productivity. You don't need to maintain the underlying infrastructure, so you can focus on your core business.

Generally, application modernization moves a workload toward platform as a service (PaaS) solutions to improve your business at scale. This approach is also known as replatforming.

For more information, see Modernize.

Innovate

Innovation is when you adopt cloud-native technologies to create customer-focused solutions that rapidly transform business outcomes.

• Goals: Reposition your business, reposition technical solutions, and find innovative data plays.

• Solutions: Adopt data and application capabilities to empower adoption and build predictive tools.

• Key benefits: Improve predictive analytics, performance, and adaptability.

Application innovation can improve your company's market position and unlock new technical capabilities. AI-powered applications can automate existing business processes and provide new ways to engage with customers. Several strategies are available. Each strategy supports a distinct value and outcome:

• Rearchitecting: Extend and optimize the architecture for cloud capabilities and scale.

• Rebuilding: Rebuild the code base by using cloud-native technologies.

• Replacing: Replace the application with SaaS or low-code solutions.

For more information, see Innovate.

Relocate

Relocation is when you move an Azure workload to a different region in Azure. You can relocate a workload anytime after migration. Relocation evaluations should be a regular part of your workload lifecycle so your workload evolves with your business needs.

• Goals: Respond to business changes and expand your global footprint, meet data sovereignty and residency requirements, and provide lower latency to end users.

• Solutions: Adopt the location, services, and capabilities of a new Azure region.

• Key benefits: Respond to business changes, expand global footprint, meet data sovereignty and residency requirements, provide lower latency to end users.

For more information, see Relocate.

Next steps

Follow the guidance that best meets your goals. If you're still considering cloud adoption, it's help to get a sense of what the cloud adoption journey looks like. The next article outlines the typical cloud adoption journey, showing what workloads you should migrate and the order you should migrate them.

Cloud adoption journey