A cloud migration checklist for growing businesses

Short answer

A successful cloud migration starts with an inventory of your applications and data, a clear reason for moving, and a target architecture. It then needs security and access controls, a tested data migration plan, infrastructure defined as code, monitoring, cost controls and a rehearsed cut-over with a way to roll back.

What should you assess before migrating?

• Which applications, databases and files exist today, and who owns them.
• How each system depends on the others.
• Performance, availability and compliance requirements.
• Current costs, so that you can compare them with the cloud fairly.

Which migration approach should you choose?

Some systems can be moved largely as they are, which is quick but keeps old limitations. Others benefit from being re-platformed onto managed services such as managed databases or serverless containers, which reduces operational work. A few may be worth rebuilding entirely. Most migrations mix these approaches system by system.

How do you keep a migration secure?

• Use least-privilege identity and access management from the start.
• Encrypt data in transit and at rest.
• Keep secrets in a managed secret store rather than in code.
• Turn on audit logging and alerts for unusual activity.

How do you avoid downtime during the cut-over?

Rehearse the migration in a staging environment with realistic data, measure how long each step takes and write a runbook. On the day itself, follow the runbook, verify every step, and keep a tested rollback path ready until the new environment has proved itself.

Key takeaways

• Migrate for a clear business reason, such as reliability, scale or speed of delivery.
• Rehearse the data migration before the real cut-over.
• Define infrastructure as code so that environments are reproducible.
• Set budgets and alerts from the first day to avoid surprise bills.

Frequently asked questions

Which cloud provider should we choose?

AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure are all strong choices. The right one depends on the services you need, the skills of your team, existing licences and where your users are located.

Will moving to the cloud reduce our costs?

It can, especially when you use managed services and scale resources to demand. Without budgets, alerts and regular reviews, cloud costs can also grow quickly, so cost control should be part of the plan.

Can RKDM Tech help with cloud migration?

Yes. We plan and carry out migrations to AWS and Google Cloud, define infrastructure as code, and set up monitoring and cost controls.