Over the years, we’ve heard a lot of different advice about what companies should do when migrating to the cloud. While most of it is helpful, some of it isn't and following it could set your migration up for failure.
Here are some dos and don'ts to keep your migration to the cloud on the right track:
Dos:
- Plan and Strategize: Create a well-defined plan and strategy before starting your migration. This includes assessing your business needs, goals, and requirements, and identifying which cloud services and providers align best with your objectives. Make sure to develop a detailed roadmap, including timelines, resource allocation, and contingency plans.
- Conduct Thorough Research: Make sure to talk to a variety of options before making a decision.While it may take more time, being thorough will make you more confident in your ultimate choice. Research different cloud service providers and compare their offerings, pricing models, security measures, and customer reviews. Consider factors such as data privacy, compliance, scalability, performance, and customer support. Choose a reputable and reliable cloud provider that meets your business requirements.
- Assess and Optimize Your Data: An often overlooked step is to make sure your existing data is ready for the cloud environment. Cleanse and de-duplicate your data, and determine what data is critical to migrate and what can be archived or deleted. The time to clean up your data is beforehand so you’ll only be moving the data you need. This will help reduce unnecessary costs and streamline your cloud migration process.
- Test and Validate: Conduct thorough testing and validation of your cloud environment before fully migrating your business operations. Test different scenarios, such as data transfer, application performance, security protocols, and disaster recovery. Validate that your applications and services are functioning as expected in the cloud environment.
- Train and Educate your Staff: Provide comprehensive training and education on how to effectively use and manage the cloud environment. Ensure your team understands the new tools, processes, and best practices associated with cloud computing. And make sure to invest in ongoing training to keep everyone up-to-date on the latest cloud technologies and security practices.
Don'ts:
- Rushing into the Migration: Faster is not always better. Rushing into your cloud migration without proper planning and strategy can lead to costly mistakes and disruptions to your business operations. Avoid hasty decisions and take the time to plan and strategize your cloud migration journey to ensure a smooth and successful transition.
- Neglecting Security and Compliance: Security and compliance should be top priorities when migrating your business to the cloud. Do not neglect the importance of data privacy, encryption, access controls, and compliance with relevant regulations. Choose a cloud provider that has robust security measures in place and follow best practices for securing your cloud environment.
- Overlooking Cost Considerations: Don’t let the promise of future cost savings blind you to the actual costs of implementing a solution the right way. Cloud computing offers cost benefits, but it's important to carefully consider the costs associated with cloud migration. Don't overlook factors such as data transfer costs, storage costs, and ongoing operational costs. Develop a clear understanding of the pricing models and potential hidden costs of your chosen cloud service provider.
- Letting Costs Get Out of Control: Don’t stop looking at costs after the initial implementation. Stay on top of the ongoing costs associated with your cloud solution and monitor your bills to make sure you’re only paying for what you need. As your business needs evolve over time, so will what you need in terms of cloud solutions.
- Ignoring Data Optimization: Migrating unnecessary or redundant data to the cloud can result in increased storage costs and complexities. Don't ignore data optimization and cleansing before migrating to the cloud. Assess your data and optimize it by archiving or deleting unnecessary data, and ensure that only relevant and valuable data is migrated.
By following these dos and avoiding these don'ts, you can ensure a smooth and successful migration of your business to the cloud.
IT Disaster Recovery Downtime Calculator
Downtime can be devastating.
Do you know how much a potential IT incident would cost your organization?
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IT Disaster Recovery Downtime Calculator
Downtime can be devastating.
Do you know how much a potential IT incident would cost your organization?
Find out now by using our simple Downtime Cost Calculator.
October 20, 2025 — Early today, Amazon Web Services experienced a major incident centered in its US‑EAST‑1 (N. Virginia) region. AWS reports the event began around 12:11 a.m. PT and tied back to DNS resolution affecting DynamoDB , with mitigation within a couple of hours and recovery continuing thereafter. As the outage rippled, popular services like Snapchat, Venmo, Ring, Roblox, Fortnite , and even some Amazon properties saw disruptions before recovering. If your apps or data are anchored to a single cloud, a morning like this can turn into a help‑desk fire drill. A multi‑cloud or cloud‑smart approach helps you ride through these moments with minimal end‑user impact. What happened (and why it matters) Single‑region fragility: US‑EAST‑1 is massive—and when it sneezes, the internet catches a cold. Incidents here have a history of wide blast radius. Shared dependencies: DNS issues to core services (like DynamoDB endpoints) can cascade across workloads that never directly “touch” that service. Multi‑cloud: practical resilience, not buzzwords For mid‑sized orgs, schools, and local government, multi‑cloud doesn’t have to mean “every app in every cloud.” It means thoughtful redundancy where it counts : Multi‑region or multi‑provider failover for critical apps Run active/standby across AWS and Azure (or another provider), or at least across two AWS regions with automated failover. Start with citizen‑facing portals, SIS/LMS access, emergency comms, and payment gateways. Portable platforms Use Kubernetes and containers, keep state externalized, and standardize infra with Terraform/Ansible so you can redeploy fast when a region (or a provider) wobbles. (Today’s DNS hiccup is exactly the kind of scenario this protects against.) Resilient data layers Replicate data asynchronously across clouds/regions; choose databases with cross‑region failover and test RPO/RTO quarterly. If you rely on a managed database tied to one region, design an escape hatch. Traffic and identity that float Use global traffic managers/DNS to shift users automatically; keep identity (MFA/SSO) highly available and not hard‑wired to a single provider’s control plane. Run the playbook Document health checks, automated cutover, and comms templates. Then practice —tabletops and live failovers. Many services today recovered within hours, but only teams with rehearsed playbooks avoided user‑visible downtime. The bottom line Cloud concentration risk is real. Outages will happen—what matters is whether your constituents, students, and staff feel it. A pragmatic multi‑cloud stance limits the blast radius and keeps your mission‑critical services online when one provider has a bad day. Need a resilience check? Akins IT can help you prioritize which systems should be multi‑cloud, design the right level of redundancy, and validate your failover plan—without overspending. Let’s start with a quick, 30‑minute review of your most critical services and RPO/RTO targets. (No slideware, just actionable next steps.)
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