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Mistakes in your cloud migration? Congratulations, you're on the right track
The first invoice from your new cloud environment drops on your doorstep. Boom! You frown. Is this really what it costs? The environment is up and running, but it feels like you went shopping in a Ferrari. Fast, shiny, but anything but efficient.
Welcome to the cloud.
Working in the cloud is not a one-to-one copy of your on-premises environment. In fact, almost everything works differently. Instead of one-time investments, from now on you work with variable costs. You pay per second, per request, and ... per error. Resources that you used to keep running happily at night now cost you thousands of euros unnoticed. Abundant scalability, but without control, not only does your environment grow - so does your bill.
On top of that comes something new: monitoring, rights structures, security, performance tuning - these are all new rules of the game. And yes, you're going to make mistakes in those. Everybody does.
That's exactly the point.
A cloud migration is not a straight line to perfection. It's a learning process. Every miss - a wrongly chosen instance, a forgotten auto-scaling routine, an inefficient data model - is an opportunity to get smarter. At least if you stop, look back and learn.
The organizations that really get a grip on their cloud are not flawless. They are eager to learn. Curious. And they turn every mistake into a step toward greater control, lower costs and smoother running operations.
Wondering what that looks like in real life? Read on.
Cloud doesn't just work differently - it thinks differently
Anyone migrating to the cloud from an on-premise mindset is bound to run into surprises. Technically it may look similar, but completely different rules apply under the hood. Especially when it comes to cost and efficiency. Here are the four biggest differences - and the pitfalls you'd rather avoid.
- From investment to consumption
With on-premise IT, you buy hardware and depreciate over years. In the cloud, you pay per second, per GB, per request. No more fixed charges, but a continuous stream of variable costs. That sounds flexible - and it is - but without sharp oversight your budget shoots in all directions. Many organizations migrate “as is,” without optimization. Result: they simply take their inefficiencies to the cloud.
You roll out a new environment, but still run on thinking errors.
- Capacity is not a long-term choice anymore
On-premise you had to think ahead: how much capacity do we need in the next 5 years? In the cloud, you can scale up and down whenever you want. But that also means: if you don't configure anything, everything scales merrily along with it. And that's reflected in your bill. Forget to configure autoscaling or lifecycle policies? Then you pay for months of unused storage and unnecessary computing power.
Grip doesn't come naturally. Chaos does (and the accompanying bill).
- Management shifts from hardware to configuration
Updates, monitoring, security - it used to be tangible. In the cloud, everything is a setting, script or API call. Efficient? Yes. But also merciless. One wrong click and you start up a duplicate environment. Or you accidentally set the backup retention to 90 days instead of 7.
The cloud is faster - including in making costly mistakes.
- Cost awareness shifts from IT to the entire organization
It used to be that the IT department controlled the budget. In the cloud, any developer can turn on resources. Without governance and clear agreements, waste flies around your ears. The biggest pitfall? Thinking that IT alone is responsible for cost optimization.
Cloud costs are not just an IT problem. They are an organizational problem.
The bottom line? You don't just migrate technology - you migrate your way of thinking. And that requires discipline, insight, evaluation and continuous adjustment.
Lift & shift: move to the cloud quickly, but rarely ready for the future
Many organizations begin their cloud journey with a classic lift & shift. Naturally: you want to speed up, spread risks and “be in the cloud already.” After all, from there you can further optimize to a cloud native approach.
In theory, that sounds like a sensible intermediate step. In practice, the added value is often limited.
What we see? Workloads are transferred almost one-to-one to virtual machines in the cloud. But with that, you also take away your inefficiencies, your outdated architecture and your maintenance burden. The application may be running in the cloud, but you're still working as if you were on-premises - including associated costs and limitations.
And that step to working truly cloud native? It will come in the end. With the associated code changes, infrastructure redesign, integration of platform services and the re-arrangement of monitoring, security and scalability.
In short: you migrate twice. While you thought you were ready.
That doesn't mean lift & shift is always a bad choice. For example, with a hard deadline or legacy applications - it may temporarily be the best option.
But then see it as just that: temporary. Not as an end point, but as an intermediate station. The real value of the cloud is in how you use it. And that requires choices beyond migration speed alone.
Cloud native does not guarantee insight
You choose cloud native to work more efficiently. Less management, more flexibility, better scalability. And hopefully: lower costs. At least, that's the idea.
With that promise comes a hefty caveat.
In reality, the use of cloud native resources turns out to be anything but transparent.
The great strength of the cloud - freedom of choice - is also its greatest pitfall. Multiple options are available for virtually every function, each with its own pricing models, limitations and behavior. And these are far from logical and rarely intuitive.
Take virtual network equipment. The basic components are inexpensive. Until you move a lot of data traffic through them. Then the bill explodes. Not because you're doing something wrong, but because you didn't know that data traffic is a separate cost.
Or consider data storage. Archive solutions are cheap per gigabyte. Until you start retrieving the data on a regular basis. Then the retrieval costs skyrocket. What seemed cheap suddenly turns out to be an unwanted hefty cost.
Therefore, cloud native is not “set and done.” Again, test, measure and learn. A solution that fits well on paper may prove inefficient in practice - technically or financially.
Successful cloud organizations do one thing consistently: optimize. They test alternatives, monitor usage patterns and actively adjust both costs and performance.
The cloud rewards curiosity. Those willing to look further. Because even the best cloud native stack can surprise you - for better but more often for worse.
Avoid making the same mistakes
At Sciante, we've experienced countless cloud migrations up close over the years - of all shapes and sizes. We've seen where things go wrong. But more importantly, we know what works.
From unnecessary lift & shift paths to surprisingly expensive storage solutions. From forgotten autoscaling to platform choices that had to be replaced later.
We are happy to share those lessons learned with you. Because it's a shame to lose time, money and energy on pitfalls that others have encountered before you. A smart migration is not only faster, but also more scalable, more manageable and much more cost efficient.
Want to get your cloud migration off to a flying start? Or are you already in the cloud and wondering whether it can be done smarter or cheaper?
Then schedule a no-obligation appointment with me. Together we will look at your situation - and you will discover how to avoid the most common mistakes.