Effectively Drive an On-Premises to Cloud Migration

As organisations seek more reliable, scalable, and cost-effective solutions for hosting their applications and IT infrastructure, migrating from on-premises to cloud-based environments is becoming increasingly popular.

April. 23, 2025

With digital transformation at the forefront of their boardroom agendas, organisations today are looking to modernise their legacy systems, drive automation and operational efficiencies, and accelerate the adoption of cutting-edge technologies to boost their competitive edge. Cloud computing is a cornerstone of digital transformation, with cloud-native platforms instrumental in enhancing agility, scalability, and innovation.

CIOs and IT decision-makers are increasingly jumping on the cloud computing bandwagon, with 63% of organisations ramping up their cloud migration efforts over the past 12 months. Nearly 29% of their IT budget has been allocated to drive cloud-based initiatives at speed and scale. There is growing conviction that leveraging cloud services enhances value creation, optimises costs, and improves organisational agility and customer responsiveness. However, the journey of transitioning from on-premises to cloud-based environments is far from smooth sailing. Hefty costs, lack of specialised expertise, and an immature existing IT ecosystem continue to be major hindrances. In fact, 90% of organisations face obstacles and risks at various stages of their cloud adoption journey.

A 4-Step Guide for Migrating from On-Premises to Cloud

Although adopting cloud computing technologies can be daunting and prone to getting easily derailed, there is a method to the madness. Meticulous planning and a robust implementation roadmap are key to addressing potential blockers and achieving the desired outcomes from your on-premises to cloud migration journey.

Here is a 4-step guide to help you envision, plan, and seamlessly execute your cloud migration.

Step 1: Gap Analysis and Readiness Assessment

Before you start putting the wheels in motion for your on-premises to cloud migration, it is mission-critical to conduct an extensive gap analysis and understand what the current (actual) and future (desired) states look like. Performing a cloud readiness assessment is an essential step in this phase, helping you understand the intricacies of your platform architecture, infrastructure, data repository, and security readiness. It also highlights potential blind spots and critical issues that need to be addressed upfront to avoid hindering the migration later.

Understanding the current state of your on-premises infrastructure is crucial for formulating effective strategies for the migration and selecting a cost-effective, compatible, and integrable cloud service provider. This assessment also enables you to identify potential bottlenecks and risks, estimate migration costs, understand system interdependencies and vulnerabilities, and evaluate the technical and operational implications of the cloud migration.

Step 2: Strategic Planning and Migration Preparation

Drawing insights from your cloud readiness assessment, your next step should be to formulate a comprehensive cloud migration implementation roadmap. This should clearly document your expected outcomes, goals, key milestones and deliverables, associated costs, timelines, performance metrics, and contingency plans. It should be signed off by your executive leadership, project sponsors, and relevant business owners.

During your strategic planning and consultation sessions with key technical stakeholders, you need to decide the right strategy for your cloud migration. Typically, there are six strategies that most organisations adopt, commonly referred to as the “6 Rs of cloud migration” – re-host, re-platform, repurchase, refactor, retain, retire, and re-factor. Depending on the state of your existing on-premises infrastructure and the nature of your applications and workloads, you need to decide which strategies are relevant and choose the best-suited cloud solution provider. This is critical as it will subsequently impact how you set up necessary virtual networks, storage systems, and data management and security mechanisms within the new cloud environment.

While finalising your cloud migration strategies and preparing the technical resources, do not neglect the importance of training your personnel and ensuring that you have the right subject-matter expertise internally to drive the migration. In addition to the project execution team, having technical SMEs and a steering committee to provide governance, quality assurance, and risk management is key to ensuring the on-time, on-budget completion of the cloud migration.

Step 3: Migration of Applications, Workloads, and Data

Once you have the strategic roadmap broken down into actionable milestones, it is time to focus on the most important phase of your cloud migration – the execution. This phase involves moving all your data, applications, workloads, servers, and other infrastructure elements from on-premises to the cloud-based environment. The entire process of migrating these assets should follow the outlined schedules and adopt an iterative approach so that you can easily course-correct and pivot if needed.

During the migration phase, it is common to encounter discrepancies and ad-hoc issues. To resolve them, you may need to temporarily shut down certain services, migrate the data in batches, and then conduct a thorough validation to ensure all systems and their components are functioning correctly. Having backup measures and contingency plans in place is critical to avoid data leakage and protect the safety and integrity of your assets.

Creating a stable cloud foundation and pathway to host the workloads is key. Building automated pipelines can be helpful in ensuring backup for all data. Emphasis should also be placed on setting up the cloud migration factory to quickly rehost workloads from on-premises to the cloud. Alternatively, refactor applications into their core components, then rebuild and re-platform them using a microservices or event-driven architecture pattern. The process can vary in steps depending on the status of your workloads.

Step 4: Testing, Validation, and Continuous Optimisation

After completing the execution phase of the cloud migration, conduct thorough system integration testing, user acceptance testing, and data validation to ensure all migrated applications and workloads function correctly in the new environment. This includes performance, security, and functionality testing to identify and rectify any issues before the system goes live.

Once the migrated systems are live on the cloud, continuously monitor and manage the cloud environment. Optimise the performance of cloud services, ensure security protocols are up to date, and regularly check the system’s health. Create detailed operational documentation for smooth handover and ongoing maintenance. By continuously optimising the cloud service costs and usage, you can leverage the scalability and flexibility of cloud-enabled platforms, setting your organisation up for future success.