Maximizing ROI from Your Cloud Migration
Lessons learned from 500+ cloud migrations and practical strategies to avoid common pitfalls that reduce return on investment.
After helping more than 500 organizations migrate to the cloud, we've seen what works and what doesn't. While cloud migration promises significant benefits—agility, scalability, cost optimization—many organizations fail to achieve their expected ROI. Here's how to avoid the common pitfalls.
Pitfall #1: Lift and Shift Without Optimization
The most common mistake is simply moving existing workloads to the cloud without optimization. While lift-and-shift is faster, it often results in higher costs because applications aren't designed for cloud consumption models.
Solution: Take time to assess each application. Some workloads benefit from re-architecting for cloud-native services, while others may be better candidates for modernization or even retirement.
Pitfall #2: Ignoring Reserved Capacity
Many organizations run everything on on-demand pricing, paying full price for predictable workloads that could run on discounted reserved capacity. This can increase cloud costs by 40-60% compared to optimal commitment strategies.
Solution: Analyze your workloads to identify predictable baseline usage. Use reserved instances or savings plans for steady-state workloads, reserving on-demand for variable or temporary needs.
Pitfall #3: Poor Resource Right-Sizing
Organizations often over-provision cloud resources "just in case," paying for capacity they never use. Our analysis shows that average cloud resource utilization is only 35-45%.
Solution: Implement continuous monitoring and right-sizing. Cloud providers offer tools to identify underutilized resources. Make right-sizing a regular operational practice, not a one-time exercise.
Pitfall #4: Neglecting Cloud Governance
Without proper governance, cloud sprawl quickly becomes a problem. Orphaned resources, untagged assets, and shadow IT all contribute to unnecessary costs and security risks.
Solution: Implement cloud governance from day one. Enforce tagging policies, establish approval workflows for new resources, and conduct regular audits to identify and remediate waste.
Pitfall #5: Underestimating Data Transfer Costs
Data egress charges often surprise organizations. Moving data out of cloud environments can be expensive, particularly for data-intensive applications or multi-cloud architectures.
Solution: Factor data transfer costs into your architecture decisions. Consider keeping data and compute together, use caching and CDNs strategically, and evaluate commitment discounts for data transfer.
Conclusion
Cloud migration can deliver significant ROI, but it requires careful planning, continuous optimization, and strong governance. Organizations that approach cloud as an ongoing journey rather than a one-time project are most successful in achieving their expected returns.