Lab3's Dr Migrate tool automates Azure migration grunt work

Microsoft partner and 2019 CRN Fast50 winner Lab3 has developed a tool to help simplify and speed up migrations to Microsoft's Azure cloud from an on-premises environment.

Named Dr Migrate, also known internally and among customers as Dr M, the tool uses a data driven approach to migrating workloads to Azure by automating labour intensive tasks involving spreadsheets.

Lab3 chief technology officer Andy Lyons told CRN that cloud migrations usually involve large spreadsheets produced by migration assessment tools which are prone to errors when the data is handed off to another team to convert them into a project plan.

“You've got all these human handoffs and data transformations from point A all the way to point D, and so we at Lab3 thought we could do better,” Lyons said.

“[Cloud migration] for the most part involves data that’s been collected during the assessment phase, and we’ve replaced humans with data processing and algorithms to look up all the collections and data points so the process is done instantly and error-free.”

Lyons added that the data can now be sorted into what either the project team or the designers need to do their work, without having to deal with handoffs of large spreadsheets.

“We’re able to essentially take the same data and then present it to project managers or designers and we're able to build out automated micro designs. In comparison, micro designs would have otherwise needed teams of people and over a few months to complete,” he said.

The automation of the tasks is data-driven, meaning Lab3 can identify which data point variables are needed to build the right agile landing zone to migrate the workload into.

The algorithms used to automate tasks would help a customer learn how their applications interconnect, identify which applications are best to migrate first and cleanse systems by removing out of date applications and connect with native Azure services.

The unwanted older applications are removed using infrastructure-as-code, while simultaneously integrating the migrated virtual machine with native Azure services.

Dr Migrate provides customers real-time dashboards with in-depth technical analysis, application relationship mapping, network and inventory tracking, treatment plans and cloud hosting services.