Understanding cloud migration strategies for a successful transition

Nov 27, 2025 10 min read

Key takeaways

Cloud migration should never be done “just because.” It only makes sense when it serves business goals, such as cost reduction, scalability, or enabling innovative applications. Otherwise, you risk facing budget shocks instead of benefits.
Use the 6Rs framework to choose your migration path for cloud. It helps determine whether you need minor adjustments, a complete redesign, or alternative solutions to maximize the benefits of the cloud.
Migration to the cloud is not a one-time leap. Leverage a phased cloud migration approach by migrating low-risk systems first, gradually moving to business-critical systems. This helps avoid outages and keep services online.
If you plan to innovate, cloud transition is a natural evolution. AI, big data, and other technologies that fuel innovation today are only practical at scale thanks to the cloud’s capacity and flexibility.

If you want optimization, digitization, or smarter operations, then the cloud is about to become your best friend. Needless to say, you may have justified concerns over how to safely migrate massive datasets, possibly spanning decades of business operations. Great news, you’re in the right place.

Cloud migration isn’t as simple as Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V (but we can dream). Even though cloud providers handle core security, maintain service availability, and support infrastructure, in order to reap the ongoing benefits, you still need to master how to use it. Like knowing how to stay compliant with a virtual, distributed infrastructure or how to prevent downtime during transition. And most importantly, how to avoid tanking your budget along the way

I bring my vast expertise as a tech lead, combined with Innowise’s track record, to help tackle cloud migration management challenges. As partners of AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, we work daily with the tools and best practices to help capitalize on the cloud and stay protected. With all of this in mind, let’s find the approach that fits you best.

Successful cloud migration strategy: how to start and where to move

A successful cloud transition strategy reveals how to transfer apps and loads with full control over costs and performance, exactly as you intended. First and foremost, it should be balanced. Assessing existing setups often takes as much time, if not more, than the migration itself — but rest assured, it pays off tenfold with a smooth transition and faster outcomes.

Assessment and planning

Cloud readiness assessment
This step is thorough by nature and with good measure. Here, we can clarify what can be transferred as is and what needs fixing or replacing. It also outlines what’s in scope and exposes risks. The assessment looks at infrastructure — applications, data, and security posture, and then widens to the business side: operations, teams, finance, and industry requirements. All of this should be cloud-ready before migration.
Business objectives & KPIs
You’re probably aware of some of the perks of cloud migration, but how does that relate to your business? In other words, what are you aiming to achieve? It could be cutting CapEx-heavy infrastructure and embracing the OpEx model, deploying products faster, or developing smart features. All these goals require KPIs to track whether you’re on course or not. For instance, you can measure network throughput, latency, response rate, memory usage, and error rates as part of your progress bar.
Risk management strategies
Things happen; it’s inevitable. For example, what if the business is suddenly faced with downtime, data loss, or performance degradation? What if data sovereignty, regulatory misalignment, or access controls are jeopardized? What if the migration won’t pay off? All these scenarios can be addressed through risk mitigation strategies and contingency plans before they occur. That’s why we assess risk exposure, signpost gaps, and create detailed policies before doing anything else.

Clear migration roadmap

Oh, how we all love a good roadmap! Based on the cloud readiness assessment and risk management plan, the roadmap serves as a step-by-step guide with checkpoints, controls, and outcomes. This ensures migration will happen predictably and exactly as the business expects. Generic goals like “Move everything to the cloud” or “modernize IT” are ineffective here. Instead, we set highly specific milestones. “Finalize cloud migration strategy (6R decisions for each app) by Week 6”, “30% of workloads migrated with zero critical downtime by end of Quarter 2” — this detail is the precursor to a successful, and trackable, migration strategy.

In my experience, a well-laid roadmap should contain the following:

Defined milestones and timelines → concrete targets and delivery dates.
Resource and cost planning → people, skills, and budget mapped to each phase.
Migration control with governance, execution, and rollback → so every step can be monitored and reversed if needed.
Accomplishments reviews → accomplishment checks at preset intervals to measure progress.
Assessment of compliance → alignment with SLAs for data pipelines and regulatory requirements.
Assurance of business fit → validating that the new data platform meets performance and functionality needs.

Cloud migration, fully controlled

Innowise manages the process end-to-end, ensuring cost-efficiency, security, and stable operations.

Common types of cloud migration strategies

There are six ways (the 6Rs) for handling the existing apps when moving to the cloud. To choose the most effective one, my team thoroughly assesses the current state of the system, the scope of work, and the client’s expectations.

Rehosting (lift and shift)

The simplest cloud migration approach is to transfer the app exactly as is, without modifying its code or architecture. Only minor configuration changes, along with performance or security tweaks are applied. If an app is simple and has few dependencies, this approach helps you save time and resources. Also, it works as a first step in a large digital transformation project, with further modifications carried out once the app is already in the cloud.

Recommended for:

tight deadlines, short-term cost savings, low-complexity apps, initial step in long-term modernization.

Risky with:

high-performance apps, legacy systems tied to hardware, compliance-heavy, and strategic workloads.

Replatforming (lift, tinker, and shift)

With replatforming, apps are modified slightly to become cloud-ready. For instance, swapping storage, database, or middleware for cloud-native equivalents can immediately improve performance and simplify management. We also connect managed services for caching, storage, containers, etc, freeing your IT departments from “babysitting the plumbing” and cutting costs. Expect this approach to take a moderate time investment.

Recommended for:

clear “quick wins”, cost optimization through managed services, gradual migration.

Risky with:

legacy systems with heavy technical debt, highly regulated workloads, mission-critical apps without time for testing.

Refactoring

This is the longest and most costly option, but also the one with the greatest long-term advantage. Refactoring means a full app redesign to unlock the full advantage of the cloud. This can involve turning to microservices, container-based, or serverless architecture, which often requires redesigning data flows, monitoring and testing frameworks, and CI/CD pipelines. Code and databases can be redeveloped to make the app more flexible and scalable. We follow this path with critical business apps or when planning integration with AI/ML, IoT, big data, and other cutting-edge and resource-intensive applications.

Recommended for:

key business apps, scalability and flexibility demands, high SLA requirements, innovative apps.

Risky with:

short app lifecycle, limited time, budget, and team skills.

Repurchasing

Replacing legacy software with cloud-based SaaS solutions (software as a service) is widely used for common business systems, such as CRM, ERP, HRM, and accounting platforms. In fact, you’re migrating the function rather than the original app. A SaaS solution is usually easier to set up and can reduce maintenance efforts compared to a custom system. However, subscription fees add up over time, so while it may be cheaper at first, in the long run it can become more expensive than owning and maintaining your own solution.

Also, SaaS solutions gain access to innovation features straightaway and reduce the IT burden. However, SaaS can involve significant integration, configuration, and change management efforts, and it may fall short if your business processes are too unique or complex. Another risk arises when transferring large volumes of sensitive data into SaaS platforms.

Recommended for:

legacy replacement, standard business features, reducing IT overhead.

Risky with:

deep customization, integration-heavy environments, vast volumes of sensitive datasets.

Retiring

Audits often reveal that some apps duplicate functions, some go unused, or have become outdated — making them candidates for retiring, or decommissioning. Others cost far more than the business value they deliver, which also makes them expendable. However, before retiring an app, we analyze hidden dependencies and regulatory requirements to ensure it won’t violate operations or compliance.

Recommended for:

minimal usage, duplicated functions, negative ROI apps.

Risky with:

hidden dependencies, specific regulatory requirements.

Retaining

Retaining involves keeping apps partially on-premises while migrating others to the cloud, creating a hybrid model. This makes sense when data must stay within your region, or for time-critical systems, where even minimal delays are unacceptable. However, such hybrid setups require secure connectivity and unified identity management, which are both costly and complex. To avoid overspending, we first assess the tangible benefits of retaining, since you’ll be paying for both cloud licenses and on-prem infrastructure.

Recommended for:

regulation restrictions, instant-response systems, no benefit from full migration.

Risky with:

complex integrations, big data solutions.

Cloud migration phases

Applications and data vary in architecture, volume, criticality, and regulatory requirements. Guided by our cloud migration methodology, we progress migrations from simple to complex, and from less critical to core systems. In each phase, we sequentially perform data and computing migration before addressing application layers and optimization. This phased cloud migration approach makes it easier to manage quality, costs, and compliance.

Cloud migration challenges

Data security and compliance (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA)

Regulatory obligations don’t change with migration, but the toolkit and approach to enforce them do. The environment becomes more fluid — dynamic, elastic, and distributed across multiple regions. Data might cross borders unintentionally, identities and roles multiply, and ephemeral resources, such as short-lived containers, serverless functions, may lack persistent logs unless specifically configured. In public cloud migration, responsibility for data security and compliance is shared between the cloud provider and the software owner. The provider safeguards the infrastructure and platform, while the software owner stays accountable for how data is stored, accessed, encrypted, and governed.

Compatibility and downtime risks

When you heavily rely on legacy, have multiple integrations, or hardware-specific features, you may face failures and subsequent downtimes, since the cloud doesn’t support them natively. Once workloads are rehosted or replatformed in the cloud, the risks are distributed across regions and services. For instance, a misconfigured API gateway, an unavailable storage service, or latency in a single region can ripple outward and cause cascading outages that impact the entire business.

Managing cultural change within the organization during the migration

Like any major transformation, cloud migration can bring about resistance. It changes the way teams work, shifts responsibilities, and requires new skills. Developers may need to adopt DevOps practices, operations teams must adapt to automation, and finance departments have to adjust to a new cost model. If neglected, this can not only slow down the adoption but also undermine the initiative.

Balancing cost vs. performance in cloud environments

In the cloud, performance comes with a price tag. Unlike on-prem, cloud spending is variable and can spike unexpectedly if workloads grow or traffic surges. This creates two opposite risks. On one hand, you can end up with overprovisioning, when allocating too many resources “just in case”. On the other hand, you can face underprovisioning when insufficient capacity brings about slowdowns and outages.

When clients come to us about the cloud, their eyes are burning — ready to outpace limits and innovate more boldly than ever. That spark is exactly what moves industries ahead. Keep the what in focus, while Innowise takes care of the how.

Dmitry Nazarevich

CTO

Best practices for cloud migration

Establish a strong governance framework for cloud usage

To migrate compliantly, we first define where all sensitive data is located and how it must be protected. Then, we apply TLS encryption in data transit and at rest, enforce strict IAM and least-privilege policies, and introduce multi-factor authentication (MFA). To automate governance, we use tools like AWS Config, Azure Policy, and third-party GRC platforms. If an app once met compliance through perimeter controls, we re-architect it with cloud-native features like security, auditing, and governance.

Use automation and orchestration tools to streamline migration

The right ecosystem of tools helps shrink migration time significantly — several times over, with the same high quality. We start with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to automatically set up and replicate infrastructure across development, testing, and production. Tools like Terraform or CloudFormation help keep it all consistent. For applications, configuration management with Ansible, Puppet, or Chef enforces the desired state of systems automatically across hundreds or even thousands of machines.

For containerized workloads, orchestration platforms like Kubernetes or cloud-native orchestrators coordinate deployments, scaling, and failover. Specialized migration tools like AWS Migration Hub, Azure Migrate, and Google Migrate for Compute Engine help automate data migration, VM replication, and cutover. Finally, we bring CI/CD pipelines to automate the release cycle, speed up deployments, set up continuous testing, and perform safe rollbacks.

Ensure collaboration between IT teams and business units

Cloud brings a need for cross-functionality across teams. While the IT department owns the “how”, business defines the “why” — and both must be clearly communicated and embedded into a single strategy. To build this bridge, we develop change management programs that communicate the vision, highlight quick wins, and help secure stakeholder buy-in. We also run workshops and hands-on labs to strengthen cloud fluency across the organization. As a result, the IT department transfers workloads under business priorities, without errors, unexpected expenses, or misaligned investments.

Monitor performance and optimize cloud resources post-migration

Cloud migration doesn’t end at cutover. We set up a framework to track key metrics, such as uptime, latency, and error rates, using tools like AWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Google Cloud Operations, or APM platforms like Datadog and New Relic. With these insights, we right-size resources by adjusting instance types, storage tiers, and configurations, and use auto-scaling and load balancing to handle demand shifts. By identifying underutilized assets, moving workloads to cheaper storage, and leveraging reserved instances, savings plans, or spot instances where appropriate, we optimize costs.

Cloud and the future of IT

Let’s look at the numbers. The global cloud computing market is expected to grow from about $752.4B in 2024 to ~$2,390B by 2030, reflecting a CAGR of ~20.4% over 2025–2030. How come it’s booming?

Today, IT evolution is largely powered by AI/ML, which in turn relies heavily on the cloud. While AI/ML models can run at both the cloud and the edge, their training, tuning, and experiments require significant computing capacities that only the cloud can provide. Meanwhile, many use cases, such as large-scale online retail, video streaming, or smart cities, are impossible beyond the cloud.

The cloud has also pushed companies toward digital transformation much faster. CRM, ERP, HRM, and accounting are much simpler to adopt as SaaS. This brings single storage, ready-made services for big data and BI, digital workspaces, and ready-to-use infrastructure (PaaS, DevOps, CI/CD, Kubernetes), which are easier and more cost-efficient to maintain.

Even as the cloud climbs toward its peak, three deployment approaches will coexist:

Cloud-first — All apps, infrastructure, and data reside in the cloud. Anticipated for highly digital products where scalability is critical, such as AI, media, e-commerce, and SaaS.
Hybrid cloud — Resources are distributed between cloud and on-premise servers. Anticipated for those balancing innovation and stability, like banks, SCADA-driven industries, and public services.
On-premises — All systems remain on-prem. Anticipated for high-regulation industries (e.g., defense), or scenarios requiring instant response, such as real-time IoT.

Migrate with a certified cloud partner

As an AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure partner, we offer proven expertise and advanced migration tools.

Next steps: get started with cloud migration at Innowise

First contact & discovery

30–60 min discovery call under NDA to outline your goals, constraints, key stakeholders, preliminary risks, and a ballpark scope/TCO.

Initial assessment & strategy workshops

1—3 weeks for app and data inventory, dependency mapping, compliance, and cost baseline. We define the target “6R” strategy per workload, landing zone, and governance design to provide a readiness report with prioritized migration backlog, architecture, security guardrails, and KPIs.

A timeline & cloud migration plan

We plan pilot-to-scale, establish RACI and ownership, create test, cutover, and rollback playbooks, a dated roadmap, RAID log to track risks, and more to guide your migration end-to-end.

Plan execution & control

Our DevOps unit stands up a landing zone via IaC, automates pipelines, and migrates your apps gradually, ensuring security, change management, and training. You stay in control through weekly steering sessions, KPI tracking, go/no-go milestones, and audit-ready logs.

Post-migration support

We provide 30 to 90 days of hypercare plus continuous optimization and improvement after, including right-sizing, autoscaling, storage tiering, and cost showback.

01 First contact & discovery

30–60 min discovery call under NDA to outline your goals, constraints, key stakeholders, preliminary risks, and a ballpark scope/TCO.

02 Initial assessment & strategy workshops

03 A timeline & cloud migration plan

We plan pilot-to-scale, establish RACI and ownership, create test, cutover, and rollback playbooks, a dated roadmap, RAID log to track risks, and more to guide your migration end-to-end.

04 Plan execution & control

05 Post-migration support

We provide 30 to 90 days of hypercare plus continuous optimization and improvement after, including right-sizing, autoscaling, storage tiering, and cost showback.

Conclusion: making the right cloud migration decision

Going cloud means stepping away from one-size-fits-all solutions. Before starting, you’ll need to draft your own migration path based on your mix of legacy systems, regulatory requirements, and business objectives. Next, balance preparation with the execution. Assess your business cloud readiness inside and out — from infrastructure to operations and teams. Keep the focus on the long-term benefits it unlocks, such as cost efficiency, greater flexibility, improved scalability, or the ability to innovate faster, and track progress against these goals.

Finally, success depends on the people behind the process. Partnering with an experienced migration team helps minimize risks, avoid costly missteps, and ensure that the transition strengthens both IT and the business as a whole.

Maksim Hodar

Head of Digital Transformation, CIO

With over 8 years of experience in digital transformation, Maksim turns complex tech challenges into tangible business wins. He has a real passion for aligning IT strategies with big-picture goals, guaranteeing hassle-free digital adoption and elite operational performance.

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