Description

This curriculum spans the equivalent of a multi-workshop technical advisory program, covering the same technical breadth and decision frameworks used in enterprise cloud migrations from assessment through optimization.

Module 1: Strategic Assessment and Readiness Evaluation

Conduct workload dependency mapping to identify inter-service communication patterns that impact migration sequencing.
Evaluate existing licensing agreements for on-premises software to determine rehosting eligibility under cloud provider licensing models.
Assess application technical debt and determine refactoring thresholds based on cloud-native compatibility requirements.
Define migration success criteria in collaboration with business units, including performance, availability, and cost benchmarks.
Perform risk impact analysis on data residency and sovereignty requirements across target cloud regions.
Establish a cross-functional migration governance board to prioritize applications based on business criticality and technical feasibility.

Module 2: Cloud Architecture Design and Target State Modeling

Design multi-account AWS Organizations or Azure Management Group structures aligned with security, billing, and operational domains.
Implement VPC and subnet topology planning to support segmentation, hybrid connectivity, and future scalability.
Select appropriate compute models (VMs, containers, serverless) based on workload elasticity and operational ownership.
Define data tier architecture considering performance SLAs, backup frequency, and cross-region replication needs.
Integrate identity federation between on-premises directories and cloud IAM using SAML or OIDC.
Document architecture decision records (ADRs) for key design choices to ensure traceability and governance compliance.

Module 3: Migration Execution and Lift-and-Shift Operations

Configure AWS Server Migration Service or Azure Migrate for continuous replication of virtual machines with minimal downtime.
Adjust replication schedules and bandwidth throttling to avoid impacting production network performance.
Validate DNS cutover plans and implement blue-green deployment patterns for critical application transitions.
Perform pre-cutover smoke tests on replicated instances to verify OS, middleware, and connectivity integrity.
Manage dependency roll-in for databases and message queues during phased migration waves.
Handle rollback procedures including DNS reversion, replication pause, and state reconciliation with on-premises systems.

Module 4: Data Migration and Database Modernization

Use AWS DMS or Azure Data Migration Service to orchestrate heterogeneous database migrations with minimal downtime.
Implement change data capture (CDC) for transactional databases requiring real-time synchronization during migration.
Convert legacy database schemas to cloud-optimized designs, including partitioning and indexing strategies.
Validate referential integrity and data consistency post-migration using automated comparison scripts.
Plan storage tiering for large datasets using S3 lifecycle policies or Azure Blob access tiers.
Address encryption key management during data transfer using cloud HSMs or customer-managed keys (CMKs).

Module 5: Identity, Access, and Security Integration

Map on-premises role-based access control (RBAC) to cloud IAM policies with principle of least privilege enforcement.
Integrate cloud logging with existing SIEM platforms using native APIs or agent-based forwarding.
Enforce conditional access policies for administrative interfaces based on IP, device compliance, and MFA status.
Implement automated security group and firewall rule reviews to prevent overly permissive configurations.
Configure cloud workload identity federation to eliminate long-term credential storage in CI/CD pipelines.
Establish audit trails for privileged actions using CloudTrail or Azure Activity Log with immutable storage.

Module 6: Cost Management and Financial Governance

Implement tagging standards across resources to enable chargeback and showback reporting by department or project.
Negotiate Reserved Instance or Savings Plan commitments based on steady-state workload forecasting.
Configure automated cost anomaly detection and budget alerts at the project and organizational level.
Optimize underutilized instances using rightsizing recommendations from Cost Explorer or Azure Advisor.
Enforce spending limits through service control policies (SCPs) or Azure Policy deny assignments.
Integrate cloud billing data into enterprise financial systems for consolidated reporting and forecasting.

Module 7: Operationalization and Cloud Operations

Deploy monitoring agents and configure synthetic transactions to validate end-user experience post-migration.
Establish incident response runbooks specific to cloud platform failure modes and service limits.
Automate backup and snapshot retention policies aligned with RPO and compliance requirements.
Implement infrastructure-as-code (IaC) workflows using Terraform or Bicep to enforce configuration consistency.
Conduct chaos engineering experiments to validate failover and disaster recovery procedures.
Onboard applications to centralized logging with structured parsing and retention tiering.

Module 8: Optimization and Continuous Improvement

Perform periodic architecture reviews to identify opportunities for serverless transformation or containerization.
Refine autoscaling policies based on historical utilization and forecasted demand patterns.
Evaluate emerging cloud services for replacing custom-built components (e.g., managed Kubernetes, event buses).
Conduct technical debt sprints to address configuration drift and outdated dependencies.
Benchmark performance improvements and cost reductions against baseline metrics from pre-migration state.
Update operational playbooks and knowledge bases to reflect evolved cloud-native support practices.