What Is a Cloud Migration Strategy?
A cloud migration strategy is a structured plan for moving applications, data, and infrastructure from on-premises environments to cloud platforms. It encompasses assessment, planning, execution, and optimisation phases, tailored to your specific business requirements and constraints.
The 6Rs of Cloud Migration
Every workload falls into one of six migration strategies: Rehost (lift-and-shift), Replatform (lift-and-reshape), Refactor (re-architect), Repurchase (move to SaaS), Retire (decommission), or Retain (keep on-premises). Choosing the right strategy for each workload determines your migration’s success and cost-effectiveness.
How Does Cloud Migration Reduce Costs?
Cloud migration reduces costs through elimination of capital expenditure on hardware, right-sizing resources to actual demand, automatic scaling during peak periods, and consolidation of management overhead. Typical organisations see 20-40% total cost reduction after optimisation.
Planning Your Migration
Successful migrations begin with thorough discovery and assessment. You need to understand application dependencies, data sensitivity classifications, compliance requirements, and performance baselines before moving any workload.
Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
The most common cloud migration failures stem from inadequate planning, underestimating network dependencies, ignoring security requirements, and failing to retrain operations teams. A structured approach with experienced architects mitigates these risks significantly.