Five questions to answer before a cloud migration

Cloud migrations rarely fail because of the technology. They run into trouble because of questions nobody answered at the start.

1. Why are we moving?

Reducing risk, retiring hardware, improving reliability and enabling growth all lead to different plans. If the only reason is that it seems like the modern thing to do, stop and define a business goal first.

2. What do we run, and what depends on what?

Build an inventory of your applications, data and connections. Hidden dependencies are a common cause of migration problems, such as a report that relies on an old server no one remembers.

3. What will it really cost?

Include the migration work, any overlap while both environments are running and ongoing management, as well as the monthly bill. Steady workloads moved without changes can cost more than they did before.

4. How much downtime can the business tolerate?

Set a target for how quickly each system must return after a failure and how much data you can afford to lose. These two figures shape your architecture and your budget. Then test a real restore.

5. Who owns it afterward?

Someone must look after patches, access, costs and alerts. Decide before launch whether that's your team or a managed provider.

With clear answers, the migration becomes a series of manageable steps. Without them, it's easy to end up with the same old problems on a larger monthly invoice.