Most cloud migrations fail the same way: the lift-and-shift happens, the bill doubles, and six months later nothing is actually more scalable. A good migration is a modernization program with a checklist — here's ours.
Phase 1 — Assess
- Inventory every workload, dependency, and data flow. Undocumented dependencies are the #1 cutover killer.
- Classify workloads: rehost, replatform, refactor, retire. Not everything deserves the cloud.
- Baseline current costs and performance so "success" has numbers.
Phase 2 — Architect
- Design the landing zone first: accounts, networking, IAM, and guardrails as Infrastructure as Code.
- Plan data migration separately from application migration — data has gravity and its own timeline.
- Decide the cutover pattern per workload: blue/green for stateless services, staged replication for databases.
Phase 3 — Migrate
- Move the lowest-risk workload first and treat it as a rehearsal.
- Run old and new in parallel with traffic mirroring before any cutover.
- Keep a tested rollback path for every single cutover. Hope is not a rollback plan.
Phase 4 — Optimize
The migration isn't done at cutover. Rightsize instances after 30 days of real telemetry, buy reservations only after usage stabilizes, and set budget alerts before the first surprise invoice — not after. Typical FinOps passes recover 20–40% of spend.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a cloud migration take?
Small estates migrate in 4–8 weeks; enterprise estates are phased over quarters. The assessment phase tells you which you are.
Is zero-downtime migration really possible?
For most workloads, yes — with blue/green cutovers and staged data replication. Some legacy systems need a brief maintenance window, which we identify up front.
AWS, Azure, or GCP?
We are vendor-neutral: the right answer depends on your workloads, compliance needs, existing licensing, and team skills.
Need this done, not just read?
Talk to our engineers about your project — honest advice within one business day.