Why Migrate to the Cloud?
Many companies still run critical systems on physical servers in the office or data center. It works, but creates risks — hardware aging, limited scalability, dependency on a single location.
Migration Strategies
Lift-and-Shift (Rehost) — the fastest way. Move VMs as-is to EC2/GCE. Minimal code changes, but also minimal cloud benefits.
Replatform — small optimizations during migration. For example, MySQL to RDS, file storage to S3.
Refactor — rewriting to cloud-native architecture (microservices, containers, serverless). Most work, but also biggest benefits.
Migration Steps
- Inventory — document all systems, dependencies, data flows
- TCO Analysis — compare current costs with cloud projections
- Pilot Project — start with a less critical system so the team can learn
- Data Migration — plan downtime or use replication
- Testing — load tests, security audit, disaster recovery verification
- Cutover — switch DNS, monitor intensively the first weeks
Common Mistakes
- Underestimating data transfer time (terabytes = days)
- Forgetting about license transfers (Microsoft, Oracle)
- Not configuring cost alerts — shock at month end
Results
Our clients typically see 30-50% infrastructure cost reduction after cloud migration and significantly improved system availability (99.9%+).