5 Critical Mistakes to Avoid in Cloud Migration

Cloud migration projects fail more often than they succeed. According to McKinsey, organizations capture only about 10% of the value they expected from cloud transformations. Having guided dozens of migrations, we've identified the mistakes that doom projects—and how to avoid them.

Mistake #1: Lift-and-Shift Without Optimization

The most common approach to cloud migration is "lift-and-shift"—moving applications to the cloud without modification. While this seems like the fastest path, it often results in higher costs and missed opportunities.

When you move an application designed for on-premises servers to cloud infrastructure, you're essentially renting someone else's servers. You don't benefit from cloud-native capabilities like auto-scaling, managed services, or serverless computing.

Better approach: Categorize applications by their strategic importance and technical debt. For commodity applications, lift-and-shift may be fine. For strategic applications, invest in re-architecting to leverage cloud-native capabilities.

Mistake #2: Ignoring the Total Cost of Ownership

Organizations often focus on infrastructure costs while ignoring the full picture. Cloud costs include:

• Compute, storage, and networking charges
• Data transfer fees (especially egress)
• Licensing costs for operating systems and databases
• Managed service fees
• Support and training costs
• Cost of migration itself

We've seen organizations shocked when their first cloud bill arrives 3x higher than expected because they didn't account for data transfer costs or forgot that cloud provider database licensing works differently.

Better approach: Build detailed cost models before migrating. Use cloud provider pricing calculators, but validate with actual usage patterns. Plan for cost optimization as an ongoing practice, not a one-time activity.

Mistake #3: Security as an Afterthought

The shared responsibility model means cloud security works differently than on-premises security. The provider secures the infrastructure; you secure everything you put on it. Many organizations learn this the hard way through breaches or compliance failures.

Common security gaps we encounter:

• Overly permissive IAM policies
• Exposed storage buckets
• Unencrypted data at rest and in transit
• Inadequate logging and monitoring
• Missing network segmentation

Better approach: Design security into your cloud architecture from day one. Implement a secure landing zone before migrating any workloads. Use infrastructure as code to enforce security controls consistently.

Mistake #4: Underestimating Application Dependencies

Applications rarely exist in isolation. They connect to databases, call APIs, integrate with other systems, and depend on network configurations. Organizations that don't fully map these dependencies face painful surprises during migration.

A financial services client planned to migrate a customer portal over a weekend. They discovered mid-migration that the portal depended on a mainframe system that couldn't be accessed from the cloud network. The migration became a multi-month project to establish secure connectivity.

Better approach: Conduct thorough discovery before planning migration waves. Use application dependency mapping tools and validate findings with application owners. Plan migrations in groups of related applications.

Mistake #5: Not Planning for Operations

Migration is not the finish line—it's the starting point. Organizations often focus so heavily on the migration itself that they don't prepare for operating in the cloud.

Post-migration challenges include:

• Teams lacking cloud skills
• Monitoring tools that don't work in cloud environments
• Incident response processes that assume on-premises access
• Cost management without governance
• No automation for routine operations

Better approach: Build cloud operations capabilities in parallel with migration. Train teams, implement cloud-native monitoring, and establish FinOps practices. Consider a managed services partner for the transition period.

Setting Yourself Up for Success

Cloud migration done right delivers real value: agility, scalability, and often cost savings. But it requires careful planning, honest assessment, and attention to the details that trip up most organizations.

Before your next migration initiative, ask whether you've addressed each of these common mistakes. The time invested upfront will pay dividends throughout the project and beyond.