Article
By Surbhi
For companies building industry-defining products, unpredictable cloud costs, vendor lock-in, and complex service dependencies often become unexpected obstacles to growth. Many organizations pay premium rates to major cloud providers for services that could be delivered more cost-effectively elsewhere. Complex management interfaces and convoluted pricing models frequently slow development cycles and create unpredictable monthly costs.
While some companies are transitioning from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud, others are moving between cloud providers to optimize their existing deployments. Cloud-to-cloud migration is an opportunity for cost optimization and operational improvement. Organizations are achieving meaningful savings by transitioning to more streamlined providers like DigitalOcean. Others implement strategic multi-cloud approaches, selecting different providers for specific workloads. A solid cloud migration strategy can lead to significant cost savings and the flexibility to scale your infrastructure on demand.
Key takeaways:
Use the 6 Rs framework (refactor, replatform, repurchase, rehost, retire, retain) to select the optimal migration approach based on your specific timeline, budget, and technical requirements rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all strategy.
Follow a structured five-phase migration process (prepare, plan, migrate, operate, optimize) to minimize risks and ensure clear deliverables at each stage, from initial assessment through post-migration cost optimization.
Implement strong governance, comprehensive security frameworks, and continuous cost management from day one to avoid common pitfalls, such as budget overruns, security vulnerabilities, and organizational resistance, that derail migration projects.
A cloud migration strategy is your roadmap for moving applications, data, and infrastructure between environments (on-premises to cloud or cloud-to-cloud). It helps you understand which workloads to move and the best approach for this process. Without a proper cloud migration strategy, keeping track of the entire workload becomes difficult, and managing the migration process can become chaotic.
Cloud-to-cloud migration offers compelling advantages that go beyond simple cost reduction. Organizations can strategically optimize their infrastructure by choosing providers that better align with their needs and budget constraints.
Major cloud providers charge premium rates for standard services, often with confusing pricing tiers that make budgeting a nightmare. Migrating to alternatives like DigitalOcean cuts monthly costs while providing transparent and predictable billing.
Multi-cloud strategies let you use different providers for what they do best—for instance, one for computing, another for CDN, and a third for AI/ML workloads. This prevents vendor lock-in and gives you leverage in negotiations while optimizing performance across your entire stack.
Many alternative providers focus on developer experience with clean interfaces and straightforward APIs. Your team spends less time fighting complex management consoles and more time shipping features, which directly impacts your ability to compete and grow.
Moving to the cloud isn’t just about following tech trends—it’s about solving real problems that keep IT teams up at night. These advantages are why many businesses opt to move to the cloud:
Migration to the cloud can offer cost advantages through a pay-as-you-go pricing structure. Organizations can eliminate capital expenditures on hardware, reduce operational costs associated with data center maintenance, and benefit from economies of scale provided by cloud service providers. Companies also avoid the hidden costs of on-premises infrastructure, such as cooling systems, backup power supplies, physical security, and dedicated IT staff for hardware maintenance.
Moving from on-premise to cloud delivers measurable performance improvements. One migration case study showed latency reduced by 40% with end users accessing requirements within 10 seconds after moving to the cloud. Organizations also gain access to enterprise-grade infrastructure without massive upfront investments in hardware and data center maintenance, benefiting from automatic scaling and global content delivery networks.
Leading cloud providers invest heavily in security infrastructure, offering enterprise-grade protection that often exceeds what individual organizations can achieve independently. These platforms provide comprehensive security features, including encryption, identity management, threat detection, and compliance certifications that meet industry standards such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR requirements.
Cloud migrations can be organized using the “6 Rs” framework, which gives you six different ways to move your applications to the cloud: refactor (rebuild apps for cloud), replatform (make minor changes for cloud compatibility), repurchase (switch to cloud-based software), rehost (move apps as-is), retire (reallocate resources for efficiency), and retain (keep some systems on-premise). Your choice of approach depends on factors such as migration budget, project timeline, application architecture complexity, performance requirements, and long-term cloud scalability goals.
Refactoring involves fundamentally redesigning applications to leverage cloud-native features and capabilities. This approach will help your business maximize cloud benefits but requires significant time, resources, and expertise. It’s typically chosen when existing applications no longer meet business requirements or organizations want to embrace cloud-native architectures fully.
Replatforming involves minimal optimizations to applications during migration to take advantage of cloud capabilities without comprehensive re-architecting. This includes migrating to managed database services, implementing auto-scaling, or adopting cloud-native storage solutions while maintaining the core application architecture.
This approach involves replacing existing applications with cloud-native alternatives, often software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions. Organizations abandon their current applications in favor of cloud-based options that offer similar functionality with enhanced features, reduced maintenance requirements, and improved integration capabilities.
Rehosting involves migrating applications to the cloud without significant modifications, essentially recreating the existing environment in a cloud infrastructure. This approach offers the quickest migration path with minimal disruption, but may not completely utilize cloud-native benefits. It’s ideal for organizations seeking rapid migration timelines or those with legacy applications functioning well in their current state.
Retiring applications is a strategic process that improves efficiency and reduces operational burdens. It allows organizations to reallocate resources to more critical initiatives, fostering innovation and agility. Furthermore, a streamlined application portfolio enhances data governance and compliance efforts, leading to a more robust and secure IT environment.
Some applications and systems may need to remain in their current environment due to regulatory requirements, performance considerations, or technical constraints. The retain approach involves keeping these systems in place while migrating other components to the cloud.
Successful cloud migration requires a structured five-phase approach. Each phase contains specific deliverables, from inventory assessment and dependency mapping in the planning stage to performance monitoring and cost optimization post-migration. The breakdown details each phase’s activities, timelines, and success criteria.
The preparation phase establishes the foundation for successful migration with comprehensive assessment and planning activities. This phase involves inventorying your existing IT assets, applications, and dependencies. You also evaluate your infrastructure, identify technical debt, and assess application performance characteristics.
Key activities include:
Aligning with stakeholders
Developing a solid business case
Conducting a risk assessment
Establishing clear objectives
Defining your success metrics
Evaluating different cloud providers
Determining the optimal cloud architecture
The planning phase transforms assessment findings into actionable migration strategies. This includes creating detailed migration roadmaps, establishing timelines, and developing comprehensive project plans. Organizations must also design their target cloud architecture, define security requirements, and establish data governance policies.
If you feel overwhelmed by migrating to the cloud, you don’t have to do it alone—DigitalOcean can help. Our migration experts will handle the entire process for free, from developing your migration strategy to ensuring a stress-free go-live experience, while helping you save 30%+ on your cloud bill like thousands of customers already have.
Critical planning activities include:
Prioritizing specific applications
Conducting dependency mapping
Allocating resources
Developing detailed migration runbooks
Establishing testing protocols and creating rollback procedures
Finalizing cloud provider selections
Negotiating contracts and establishing cost management frameworks
The execution phase involves implementing the migration strategy through systematic workload transfers. This phase requires careful coordination between multiple teams, adherence to established timelines, and continuous monitoring of migration progress. During this phase, you’ll test migrations to catch any issues, execute the actual move of your applications and data, and verify everything works correctly in the new cloud environment.
Migration execution should include:
Establishing change management procedures
Maintaining detailed documentation
Implementing comprehensive cloud monitoring
Executing rollback procedures (if needed)
Maintaining communication with stakeholders
The operational phase focuses on running your applications smoothly in the cloud day-to-day. This means setting up monitoring dashboards to track performance and costs, creating backup and disaster recovery procedures, training your team on cloud management tools, and establishing who responds when something goes wrong.
Organizations should work on the following:
Establishing incident response procedures
Implementing backup and disaster recovery solutions
Ensuring cloud compliance with security and regulatory requirements
Optimizing cloud configurations
Implementing cloud cost management best practices
Establishing performance baselines
The optimization phase is about maximizing your cloud investment. This means regularly reviewing your bills to eliminate waste, fine-tuning application performance, automating repetitive tasks, and adopting newer cloud services that could save you time or money.
Critical points include:
Implementing cloud automation capabilities
Conducting regular security reviews
Completing compliance audits
Carrying out performance tuning
Selecting the proper migration framework and toolset is critical for automating workload discovery, dependency mapping, and data transfer processes. The selection below covers proven frameworks and tools categorized by migration phase and cloud provider compatibility.
Cloud migration begins with comprehensive assessment tools that analyze existing infrastructure, applications, and dependencies. These platforms offer automated discovery capabilities, dependency mapping, and cost modeling features that inform migration planning decisions. They help organizations identify potential challenges, estimate migration costs, and develop realistic timelines for their migration projects.
Explore these tools for assessment and planning:
CloudHealth by VMware- Provides multi-cloud cost management, security, and governance insights to help optimize your cloud strategy before and after migration.
Flexera One- Offers unified IT asset management and cloud cost optimization, enabling organizations to discover, analyze, and manage hybrid cloud environments effectively.
Turbonomic- Uses AI-powered application resource management to optimize performance and costs across on-premises and cloud infrastructures continuously.
Device42- Delivers comprehensive IT infrastructure discovery and dependency mapping, providing detailed visibility into applications, services, and their interconnections.
Lansweeper- Automates IT asset discovery and inventory management, helping organizations understand their current infrastructure before planning cloud migrations.
Migration execution requires specialized tools for data transfer, application migration, and infrastructure provisioning. These platforms offer features like real-time data synchronization, automated failover capabilities, and comprehensive monitoring throughout the migration process. They help organizations execute complex migrations while maintaining data integrity and minimizing business disruption, reducing manual effort and downtime.
These platforms may help with migration execution:
Carbonite Migrate- Provides real-time replication and migration capabilities for physical, virtual, and cloud environments with minimal downtime.
Cloudsfer- Specializes in cloud-to-cloud data migration, enabling seamless transfer of files, emails, and applications between different cloud platforms.
Zerto Virtual Replication- Offers continuous data protection and disaster recovery solutions with near-zero downtime for virtual and cloud environments.
AppDynamics- Provides application performance monitoring and business transaction tracking to ensure applications perform optimally during and after migration.
Talend- Delivers comprehensive data integration and migration capabilities, helping organizations move and transform data across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Post-migration success depends on robust monitoring and management capabilities. These tools offer real-time performance monitoring, automated alerting, and detailed analytics that help organizations optimize their cloud deployments. They integrate with existing management tools and provide unified dashboards for comprehensive visibility into cloud environments:
Consider these monitoring solutions:
DigitalOcean Monitoring- Provides built-in infrastructure monitoring with customizable alerts and dashboards designed explicitly for DigitalOcean cloud resources.
Datadog- Offers comprehensive cloud monitoring, APM, and log management across multiple cloud providers with advanced analytics and alerting capabilities.
New Relic- Delivers full-stack observability with application performance monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, and digital experience insights.
Dynatrace- Uses AI-powered monitoring to provide automatic discovery, dependency mapping, and root cause analysis for cloud-native applications.
Splunk- Provides enterprise-grade data analytics and monitoring capabilities, enabling organizations to search, monitor, and analyze machine-generated data from cloud infrastructures.
A well-executed cloud migration comes down to following the proper steps to avoid costly mistakes and keep your business running smoothly. These cloud migration best practices will help you move to the cloud without losing data or dealing with extended downtime.
DigitalOcean’s migration experts help customers reduce cloud costs by 30-75% while providing free, hands-on support that eliminates the stress and complexity of moving to the cloud. Watch this video to learn the proven phased strategy that minimizes downtime and see real customer success stories showing how businesses saved thousands while getting better performance and support.
Without proper governance, cloud migrations can spiral into chaos with unclear ownership, conflicting decisions, and no transparent process for handling problems when they arise. Successful cloud migration requires strong governance frameworks that define roles, responsibilities, and decision-making processes. You’ll be required to implement change management procedures and create clear escalation paths for addressing issues that arise during your migration. Ensure your governance plan includes training your team so everyone knows what to do and how to work in the cloud.
Data breaches, regulatory violations, and inadequate access controls pose serious threats during migration, especially when sensitive information is moved between environments. Security considerations must be integrated throughout your migration process, from initial planning through ongoing operations. You’ll have to implement identity and access management solutions, encrypt data in transit, and establish business monitoring and threat detection capabilities.
Managing cloud costs effectively means keeping a close eye on how you use resources, where your money is going, and where you can save. Implement cost allocation frameworks, establish budgeting and forecasting processes, and regularly review cloud spending to avoid budget overruns. Your strategies should include automated resource scaling, reserved instance planning, and regular optimization reviews while implementing tools for tracking your startup’s cloud expenses as you grow.
Post-migration optimization focuses on cost management, performance tuning, and security hardening to maximize cloud ROI. Essential activities include rightsizing instances, implementing automated scaling policies, and establishing monitoring dashboards for performance metrics.
Post-migration optimization focuses on maximizing application performance and user experience in your cloud environment. Analyze performance metrics, identify bottlenecks, and implement improvements that leverage cloud-native capabilities for your infrastructure. Address application architecture, database performance, and network configuration by implementing content delivery networks, optimizing database queries, and leveraging cloud-native scaling capabilities to ensure optimal user performance.
Keeping costs down means regularly checking how you use your cloud resources and adjusting based on your needs. Review resource utilization regularly, implement automated scaling policies, and optimize storage configurations to minimize costs while maintaining performance. Optimization strategies should include rightsizing resources, implementing lifecycle policies for data storage, and leveraging spot instances for appropriate workloads.
Post-migration security optimization involves implementing advanced security capabilities and maintaining up-to-date security postures for your startup. Regularly assess security configurations, implement automated security monitoring, and maintain comprehensive incident response capabilities. Conduct regular penetration testing, vulnerability assessments, and compliance audits while staying current with cloud security best practices and implementing emerging security technologies as they become available.
DigitalOcean’s cloud migration service moves your workloads from hyperscalers like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure or on-premises infrastructure to a simpler structure without the complexity and downtime. Our migration team handles the process with free, hands-on support, helping you save 30%+ on your cloud bill while maintaining performance and reliability. From initial assessment to go-live support, migrate your applications, databases, and infrastructure in days with transparent pricing and zero migration fees.
Key benefits:
Free migration with dedicated solution architects
Workload assessment and migration strategy development
Pre-migration testing and dry-run capabilities to minimize downtime
Support for databases, applications, Kubernetes clusters, and storage
6 months of free Gradient Platform resources for new migrations
Trusted partner network for specialized migration needs
NoBid, an ad-tech startup, migrated its workload to DigitalOcean cloud services to achieve cost-effective cloud performance during its busiest season, demonstrating its confidence in DigitalOcean’s services. This strategic decision proved highly beneficial, with the startup realizing 16% cost savings compared to its previous infrastructure costs.
Get started with DigitalOcean’s Cloud Migration program for everything you need to move, optimize, and scale your infrastructure.
What are the phases of a cloud migration strategy?
Cloud migration involves five key phases: Prepare (assess current environment and readiness), Plan (develop migration strategy and architecture), Migration (execute the actual move to cloud), Operate (establish ongoing cloud management and monitoring), and Optimize (continuous improvement and cost optimization). Each phase builds upon the previous one, requiring careful coordination between teams and stakeholders.
How do I choose the right cloud migration approach?
Use the 6 Rs framework based on your timeline, budget, and technical constraints. When selecting the rehost, replatform, repurchase, refactor, retire, or retain approaches, consider application complexity, business criticality, and available resources.
What tools help with cloud migration planning?
Key tools include assessment platforms (Flexera One, Turbonomic), migration execution tools (Carbonite Migrate, Cloudsfer), and monitoring solutions (DigitalOcean Monitoring, CloudWatch).
How do I ensure cloud migration security?
Implement comprehensive security frameworks including identity management, encryption, and continuous monitoring. Establish governance policies, conduct regular assessments, and maintain incident response capabilities.
Surbhi is a Technical Writer at DigitalOcean with over 5 years of expertise in cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning documentation. She blends her writing skills with technical knowledge to create accessible guides that help emerging technologists master complex concepts.
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