Kapil Bakshi
Chief Solutions Architect, Cisco Systems Inc.

This all goes into the planning phases. If you want to continue operations in the data center while  making changes, then one really needs to go through migration planning to identify areas of risk and mitigation. Not to mention put in place a change management process or a system. Considerations like business process analysis, application dependency mapping, prioritization of which application and business process to move, and identification of move groups, need to be planned from the start.

Once you have identified all of the above then you can apply classic migration principles, such as setting up a parallel infrastructure for migration and operate it in parity, while you repurpose the old infrastructure.
 
There’s also the fact that organizations that have been most effective with this process have adopted standardization throughout the data center. So, while agencies are getting themselves oriented and making their optimization plans, they should also be paying attention to making sure that enterprise standards are being adhered to, so that migration and optimization happen most efficiently once they get underway.