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Use the plan methodology

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To migrate your workloads to Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty, you need to follow the Cloud Adoption Framework Plan methodology. This methodology helps you align your cloud adoption plans to your business outcomes and motivations. In this article, you'll learn how to prepare for workload migrations using the cloud adoption framework plan methodology.

Identify your first adoption project

The first adoption project should align with the motivations behind cloud adoption. Whenever possible, the first project should also demonstrate progress towards a defined outcome.

After you identify your sovereign strategy, motivations, and drivers, look for projects that could address these strategies quickly.

  • For migration, the Azure Readiness Guide and the Azure Migration Guide should be used as guidance to migrate that first workload but combined with information to implement sovereign guardrails.

  • If the main driver is to innovate to modernize the current application, create a targeted Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty dev/test environment for your application, with the appropriate Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty initiative applied.

Form a strategy team

The next step is to involve individuals whose participation is critical for the success of this adoption plan. These individuals should form a strategy team responsible for leading the cloud adoption within your organization, supporting all outcomes, people and processes changes and technical projects identified. Critical to the success of a sovereign workload is a team that understands data residency and data classification. These skills enable you to determine where the projects should reside as different classifications of data may require different handling and controls.

Use workload templates

Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty includes ready-to-use workload templates that can help you deploy and operate your workloads in a repeatable manner. These templates provide you with resources, configurations, and policies that meet your sovereignty requirements.

If you're working with a Microsoft Partner, do you have a plan for how that migration partner will support you during and after the project? The Cloud Adoption Framework documentation for planning covers most areas for consideration to move workloads to cloud.

Apply sovereign guardrails and policies

For sovereignty workloads, you need to identify Azure policies initiatives or Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty initiatives and compliance mappings. This step expands on the Azure built-in initiatives to help you automate policy enforcement and foster a robust governance framework to reduce the risk of noncompliance.

Secure your workloads with keys and certificates

Another area to plan for upfront is to secure workloads with keys and certificates, as it impacts the organization structures depending on the key management choices you make. For more information, see:

Plan for confidential computing and attestation

If the workloads you chose to migrate are dependent on running in Confidential Computing, due to concerns of insider threats, you should plan the deployment pattern for the attestation provider service. An attestation provider is a service endpoint of Azure Attestation that provides REST contract.

Explore certification paths to enhance your cloud skills

In addition to the suggested skilling plan in the Cloud Adoption Framework, we recommend you to explore the following certification paths.

Next steps

After you have the skills plan and cloud adoption plan, you should have an actionable strategy and plan document or deployable Cloud Adoption Plan Azure DevOps Template to move onto the Cloud Adoption Framework Ready methodology. The Cloud Adoption Plan template creates a backlog for managing cloud adoption efforts based on the guidance in the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework.