FAQs
Have Questions?
What are the 6 Rs of cloud migration?
The 6 Rs are a planning framework: rehost (lift and shift), replatform (lift, tinker, shift), repurchase (move to SaaS), refactor (re-architect), retire (decommission), and retain (keep on-premises). Each workload in the portfolio is assigned an R based on cost, complexity, and value. Most migrations use a mix of strategies because workloads have different fit characteristics.
How long does cloud migration take?
Timelines vary with portfolio size and complexity. A small business with a dozen servers and Microsoft 365 already in place might migrate the rest in three to six months. A mid-sized business with custom applications, regulated data, and integration dependencies often runs migrations across nine to eighteen months with multiple waves. The phased approach keeps risk manageable and lets early wins fund later phases.
Should we use Azure, AWS, or both?
The choice depends on existing investments, workload type, and operational fit. Microsoft-heavy environments often land on Azure because of identity integration and licensing alignment. AWS tends to win for breadth of services and certain analytics workloads. Some companies run multi-cloud intentionally to avoid lock-in, but multi-cloud doubles the operational complexity, which is fine if you have the team for it.
What is the cost surprise we should plan for?
The most common cost surprises are egress charges (data leaving the cloud), under-rightsized resources running 24/7 when they could be scaled down, and licensing models that work differently in the cloud than they did on-premises. Strong cost projections account for these explicitly. The FinOps practice that emerged in the last several years exists specifically because of these patterns.
What happens after migration?
After migration the optimization phase begins. Right-sizing resources to actual demand, scheduling non-production workloads to run only during business hours, applying reserved instance discounts, and identifying workloads that should be re-architected for cloud-native services typically produces significant year-two savings. Skipping the optimization phase is the second most common reason migrations disappoint on cost.