Description

This curriculum spans the technical and operational rigor of a multi-workshop cloud migration program, addressing the same architectural, security, and operational challenges encountered in enterprise advisory engagements for moving complex web applications to the cloud.

Module 1: Cloud Readiness Assessment and Application Portfolio Analysis

Conduct codebase dependency mapping to identify tightly coupled components that inhibit independent deployment in cloud environments.
Evaluate legacy session state management mechanisms against cloud-native stateless design requirements.
Classify applications using the GartnerPACE framework to determine rehost, refactor, rearchitect, or retire strategies.
Assess database compatibility with cloud-managed services, including version support and extension limitations.
Document integration points with on-premises systems that require hybrid connectivity solutions post-migration.
Perform performance baseline measurements for critical user transactions to establish cloud migration success criteria.

Module 2: Cloud Architecture Design and Pattern Selection

Select between monolithic lift-and-shift and microservices decomposition based on business tolerance for refactoring effort and downtime.
Implement circuit breaker patterns in inter-service communication to handle cloud network latency and transient failures.
Design regional failover strategies using active-passive or active-active topologies based on RTO and RPO requirements.
Integrate asynchronous messaging (e.g., SQS, Pub/Sub) to decouple components and manage variable cloud workload bursts.
Configure auto-scaling groups with custom CloudWatch metrics tied to application-level KPIs, not just CPU utilization.
Define data residency boundaries and map them to specific cloud regions during architecture design to meet compliance mandates.

Module 3: Identity, Access, and Security Integration

Migrate application-level user stores to cloud identity providers using SCIM provisioning while maintaining audit trail continuity.
Implement short-lived token rotation for service-to-service authentication using cloud IAM roles and workload identity federation.
Enforce TLS 1.3 across all internal microservices using service mesh sidecars with mTLS policy enforcement.
Integrate cloud-native key management (e.g., AWS KMS, Azure Key Vault) for encrypting application configuration secrets.
Configure conditional access policies that restrict administrative console access based on IP ranges and MFA compliance.
Implement centralized logging of authentication events to detect lateral movement across cloud-hosted applications.

Module 4: Data Migration and Database Modernization

Execute zero-downtime database cutover using logical replication between on-premises and cloud-managed instances.
Convert stored procedures incompatible with cloud database engines into application-layer logic or Lambda functions.
Partition large tables horizontally before migration to reduce lock contention during data transfer.
Implement change data capture (CDC) to synchronize on-premises and cloud databases during extended migration windows.
Evaluate read replica placement across availability zones to optimize latency for geographically distributed users.
Establish backup retention policies aligned with SLAs, including cross-region replication for disaster recovery.

Module 5: CI/CD Pipeline Implementation and DevOps Integration

Design immutable artifact pipelines that promote the same container image across staging and production environments.
Integrate infrastructure-as-code (IaC) validation into pull requests using static analysis tools like Checkov or tfsec.
Configure canary deployments with automated rollback triggers based on error rate and latency thresholds.
Manage environment-specific configuration using parameter stores instead of hardcoded values in deployment manifests.
Enforce security scanning of container images for CVEs before promotion to production.
Implement pipeline concurrency controls to prevent conflicting deployments across shared microservices.

Module 6: Observability, Monitoring, and Incident Response

Correlate distributed traces across microservices using shared context headers to diagnose performance bottlenecks.
Define service-level objectives (SLOs) and error budgets to guide incident prioritization and deployment throttling.
Aggregate logs from containerized applications using structured JSON format for efficient querying and alerting.
Configure synthetic transaction monitoring to validate external user journeys across multiple cloud regions.
Integrate cloud cost metrics into dashboards to identify underutilized resources contributing to performance issues.
Establish on-call escalation paths with runbooks specific to cloud provider service degradation events.

Module 7: Governance, Cost Management, and Compliance

Implement tagging policies enforced at deployment time to ensure accurate cost allocation across business units.
Configure budget alerts with automated actions (e.g., stop non-production instances) when thresholds are exceeded.
Conduct quarterly access reviews for cloud service accounts used by applications to prevent privilege creep.
Document data flow diagrams for audit purposes, showing encryption states and transfer mechanisms across trust boundaries.
Negotiate enterprise agreements with cloud providers only after modeling 3-year TCO for projected workload growth.
Enforce network perimeter controls using cloud firewall policies and VPC flow log monitoring for anomaly detection.

Module 8: Post-Migration Optimization and Continuous Improvement

Right-size compute instances based on 30-day utilization trends, balancing performance and cost efficiency.
Refactor stateful components to leverage cloud-native services like managed Kubernetes or serverless runtimes.
Implement automated cleanup of orphaned storage volumes and unattached IP addresses.
Conduct chaos engineering experiments to validate resilience of multi-AZ and multi-region deployments.
Rotate long-lived credentials and certificates using automated rotation jobs with rollback capability.
Update disaster recovery runbooks to reflect cloud-specific recovery procedures and tooling.