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Read articleMoving to AWS, Azure or Google Cloud can lower costs, improve resilience and speed up delivery. But most migrations that go over budget or over time don't fail during the move itself. They fail because of decisions that were skipped during planning. Work through these twelve steps before you migrate your first workload.
1. Define why you are migrating
"Everyone is moving to the cloud" is not a business case. Write down the specific outcomes you expect, such as closing a data center, cutting hardware refresh costs, improving disaster recovery or releasing features faster. These goals decide which workloads to move first and how you'll measure success.
2. Build a complete application inventory
List every application, database, file share and scheduled job, along with its owner, business criticality and current hosting. Discovery tools such as Azure Migrate or AWS Application Discovery Service help, but always confirm the results with application owners. Shadow IT tends to surface here.
3. Map dependencies
Applications rarely live alone. Find out which systems talk to each other, which share databases and which rely on hard-coded IP addresses. Unmapped dependencies are the biggest cause of failed cutovers.
4. Choose a strategy for each workload
Use the "6 Rs": rehost (lift and shift), replatform (small optimizations), refactor (re-architect for the cloud), repurchase (move to SaaS), retire or retain. Not everything should move, and not everything should be rebuilt.
5. Estimate total cost of ownership honestly
Compare your real current costs (hardware, power, licenses, staff time) with the projected cloud costs. Include data transfer, backup storage and support plans, which are often missed. Right-size from day one instead of copying your on-premises server sizes.
6. Design a secure landing zone
Before any workload arrives, set up your account structure, identity and access management, network topology, encryption and logging. Retrofitting governance after migration is far harder than building it first.
7. Plan for compliance
If you handle health, payment or personal data, map HIPAA, PCI DSS or state privacy requirements to cloud controls. Confirm which services your provider covers under a BAA or its compliance attestations.
8. Decide how data will move
Large databases and file stores may take days to copy over the network. Plan replication, sync windows and whether you need offline transfer devices. Test how long it really takes, not how long you hope it will take.
9. Migrate in waves
Start with a low-risk pilot to prove the process, then move in waves grouped by dependency. Each wave should improve the playbook for the next.
10. Write and test a rollback plan
For every cutover, define the point of no return and how you'll roll back if something breaks. A rollback plan you haven't tested isn't a plan.
11. Prepare your people
Cloud operations need different skills: infrastructure as code, cost management, cloud-native monitoring. Train your team early, or partner with a managed services provider for day-two operations.
12. Optimize after go-live
Migration is the beginning, not the end. Review spend monthly, turn off idle resources, buy reserved capacity for steady workloads and modernize applications over time.
Need a second opinion?
EdgeTech IT offers a cloud readiness assessment that covers inventory, dependency mapping, TCO and a wave plan, so you know the timeline and budget before you commit.