With the advent of digital transformation, migrating Oracle databases from on-premises to the cloud has become not just an IT endeavor, but a boardroom initiative. The cloud provides the scalability, flexibility and cost savings to support these transformations but brings with it many complexities surrounding compliance, downtime, and performance management.

A successful Oracle cloud migration entails much more than “lifting and shifting” workloads; you must plan carefully and modernize the architecture and build-in ongoing performance optimization to realize real business value.

Why Move Oracle Databases to the Cloud?

• Scalability & Agility – Add resources as needed to accommodate growth, peak workload or seasonal demand Cost Savings – Eliminate
• CapEx Cap–expenditure on hardware and optimize your OpEx Operating–expenditure with pay-as-you-go models so you can maximize
• ROI Return on Investment Resilience & Continuity – Leverage High-availability zones, Disaster Recovery (DR) frameworks, geo-redundant backups
• Faster Innovation – Gain access to a myriad of AI/ML, analytics and DevOps tools that live and breathe on the cloud
• Global Reach – With a global cloud infrastructure you can deliver low-latency applications to customers worldwide.

Important Factors to Consider When Migrating to Oracle Cloud

1. Assessment & Planning

A successful migration begins with thoroughly assessing your workloads, dependencies, compliance requirements, and business SLAs. Organizations will need to determine the best way to migrate to OCI: whether they will rehost (lift & shift), replatform, or refactor.

• Rehost (Lift & Shift): This is the quickest of the paths, with minimal rework required.
• Replatform: Optimize configurations for the Cloud, while retaining the same technology without having to redesign.
• Refactor: Modernize applications in order to use fully cloud-native features to take full advantage of the OCI environment and services.

2. Selecting the Appropriate Cloud Model

• Public Cloud (OCI, AWS, Azure, GCP)– Flexible, cost-effective and usually appropriate for most workloads.
• Private Cloud – Better control if sensitive data or in certain regulated industries.
• Hybrid/Multicloud – Combine the best of on-prem and multiple cloud providers as a way to avoid lock-in, while benchmarking workloads for enhanced performance.

3. Security & Compliance

• Make sure data is encrypted both at rest and in transit.
• Establish role based access (RBAC) controls and least-privilege access.
• Comply with relevant regulations including GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS as well as your industry standard regulations.
• Maintain governance by using audit trails and continuous monitoring.

4. Downtime and Business Continuity

• Migrate in waves with preestablished rollback plans.
• Implement GOLDENGATE replication to slowly cutover your application and its databases. If your application requires zero downtime, use one of the zero downtime methodologies.
• Conduct Disaster Recovery (DR) testing to ensure that you can immediately failover in the event of a planned or unplanned outage.

5. Performance Optimization

• Tuning SQL queries and indexes is best done pre- and post-migration.
• Where benchmarking is relevant establish baselines on your on-prem system(s) before cutover.
• After cutover, monitor I/O throughput and network bandwidth and latency.

6. Cost Control

• As business you want to use cloud infrastructure that is rightsized to your compute and storage needs.
• Utilize auto-scaling, reserved instances and spot instances.

Key Obstacles and Common Issues to Expect with Oracle Cloud Migrations

• Legacy applications may not be cloud ready
• Data transfer (data gravity) especially when high volume
• Risks and security gaps while data is in flight
• Unoptimized workloads after migration
• Managing hybrid or multicloud complexity

Best Practices for Cloud Migration Success

• Establish a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) to set governance, security, and architectural policies
• Start with non-critical or non-mission critical workloads before moving onto mission-critical applications
• Determine Key Performance Indicators (KPI) (cost savings, response times, uptime etc.) to measure your success
• Leverage Oracle certified professionals to manage risks and deliver faster adoption
• Implement ongoing monitoring with Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and database health monitoring to drive continuous improvement.

Our Oracle Migration Services at Empirical Edge

At Empirical Edge, we provide end-to-end Oracle migration services to help businesses modernize their data infrastructure at the lowest risk and the greatest efficiency.

We offer:

• Full Assessments – Roadmaps based on your workloads, SLAs, and compliance requirements
• Secure & Compliant Migration – Encryption, regulatory requirements, and governance checks
• Performance Tuning and Optimization – Query tuning, indexes, and partitioning to maximize performance
• Resilient Backup & DR Strategies – Cloud-native backup and recovery solutions to provide uptime assurance.
• Ongoing DBA Support – Proactive monitoring, automated alerts, and managed services.

View Oracle Database Development & Migration Services

Real World Use Case

Industry: Financial Services
Challenge: Old, on-prem Oracle database infrastructure was challenging to maintain, causing downtime disruptions and increasing operational costs.
Solution: Empirical Edge replatformed their Oracle DB to OCI while optimizing indexing with GoldenGate replication.
Outcome:

• 50% Faster Transaction Processing
• 35% Cost Savings on Infrastructure
• 99.99% Uptime SLA

Conclusion: Future-Proofing Your Oracle Investment

Migrating Oracle databases from on-premise to the cloud is not just about moving the infrastructure to the cloud, it is also a business transformation strategy. Organizations can leverage true cloud scalability, resilience, and innovation by applying the appropriate planning, compliance, performance, and cost-optimizing activities.
Empirical Edge has Oracle-certified experts, proven methodologies, and pragmatic access to secure your migration process and future-proof your Oracle investment.
Want to get started modernizing your Oracle environment? Connect with Empirical Edge today to start your cloud migration.