top of page

Cloud Migration – Transforming Business, not just servers

  • Writer: Devraj Sanyal
    Devraj Sanyal
  • Aug 12
  • 3 min read

Every year, global cloud computing spending critics are watched as it races toward $825 billion by 2025, signalling that cloud is not just infrastructure, it is where the future is built. Yet even with this massive shift, an alarming 70% of cloud migration efforts still fail or stall*, often due to ill-defined goals, escalating costs, and misaligned strategies.


At its best, cloud migration is a strategic lever. It reduces infrastructure expenses by up to 66% in compute and storage costs*, enables businesses to scale seamlessly during peak periods, and supports pivoting quickly toward changing market demands. Organizations that embrace cloud effectively report being more agile and profitable, some seeing a 21% boost in profits and 26% faster growth.*


But when migration proceeds without clarity, the narrative unravels. Companies plunge ahead with migration tools, checklists, and plans yet bypass the conversation that should guide it all: What business challenge is this addressing? Because every cloud migration should begin with one core question, and aligning around that answer should drive every step forward.


Migration woes often emerge when tools alone define the timeline, not outcomes. Consider dependency issues: poorly mapped systems can lead to broken integrations, missing customer data, and costly downtime, errors that reverberate through operations. Cost overruns remain a top risk. Talent bottlenecks are equally disruptive. In fact, over 70% of IT executives see cloud skills gaps as a top barrier. #

The migration that succeeds is one backed by a thought through transformation, and it unfolds in stages. It starts with a readiness assessment, not a cutover date. This grounding phase surfaces underlying dependencies, compliance needs, and infrastructural stealth. It ensures the migration roadmap aligns with business outcomes, not just infrastructure objectives. Governance and compliance are woven through the architecture, not appended later. Embedding policy in design helps tame sprawl, control costs, and uphold standards across multi-region deployments with localization concerns.


Investment in team capability precedes migration. McKinsey research said that Companies that allocate at least 4% of their cloud budget to training are over 3x more likely to succeed, with fewer configuration errors and higher adoption rates.** Training must span technical fluency and include DevOps, automation, IaC and empower teams to confidently own the cloud journey.


Execution requires discipline and iteration and needs to follow the stages of pilot, evaluate, refine, then scale. Tools like Azure Migrate, ASR, and DMS play vital roles not as project drivers but as enablers, activated only when there's alignment and readiness.


By prioritizing real-time data processing and insights, the migration delivered measurable gains in customer intelligence and decision agility.


In 2025, high-performance cloud matters more than ever. With nearly half of all workloads already in public cloud and 72% of IT leaders prioritizing cost optimization, performance, security, and efficiency must be front and centre. ## 

At its heart, cloud migration is a transformation enabler. The organizations that thrive shape their migration around business outcomes, align across teams, embed governance, build capability, and iterate thoughtfully. Their measure of success are not terabytes shifted, but business value that includes faster innovation, operational resilience, scalable growth, and empowered teams.


The essential shift, therefore, is to stop framing cloud migration as “How do we move to the cloud?” and start asking, “What challenge are we solving and who belongs in the room to solve it?”

 

References:

 

 
 
 

Thanks for subscribing!

bottom of page