Cloud Migration Strategy
Moving to the cloud isn't just a hosting change; it's an opportunity to fundamentally improve how your team ships software, scales infrastructure, and manages costs. But poorly planned migrations create new problems: unexpected expenses, performance regressions, and operational complexity. With experience leading cloud migrations at enterprise scale (including Veeva's transition serving millions of healthcare professionals globally), we develop migration strategies that minimize risk while maximizing the benefits of cloud platforms.
Risk-Managed Migrations
Detailed migration playbooks with staged rollouts, rollback procedures, and continuous validation prevent business disruption during cloud transitions.
Cost Predictability
Right-size cloud resources from day one using traffic analysis and performance modeling, avoiding over-provisioning while maintaining headroom for growth.
Security & Compliance
Cloud architectures designed with security-first principles, compliance requirements, and audit trails baked in from the start.
Performance Optimization
Use cloud-native services like CDNs, managed databases, and auto-scaling to deliver faster, more reliable experiences than on-premises infrastructure.
Team Readiness
Comprehensive training and documentation ensure your team can manage, monitor, and optimize cloud resources independently.
Future Flexibility
Cloud-native architectures support modern development practices, rapid iteration, and seamless integration with new services as needs evolve.
Why cloud migrations fail
Organizations often approach cloud migration as a lift-and-shift operation: move existing infrastructure to cloud VMs and call it done. This approach misses the real value of cloud platforms while creating new challenges: inflexible architecture that doesn't use cloud services, unpredictable costs from poor resource management, and teams struggling with unfamiliar operational models.
Successful cloud migrations require strategic planning that considers not just technical architecture but also team capabilities, compliance requirements, cost structures, and business continuity. The goal isn't just moving workloads; it's transforming how your organization builds, deploys, and scales applications.
At Veeva, I led engineering teams through complex cloud migrations supporting mission-critical pharmaceutical applications with strict uptime requirements and global user bases. These projects demanded meticulous planning, phased execution, comprehensive testing, and close coordination between development, operations, security, and business stakeholders. The experience reinforced that successful migrations depend on people and process as much as technology.
Our migration methodology
Assessment and planning
Comprehensive analysis of current infrastructure, application dependencies, traffic patterns, and team capabilities. We identify migration priorities, risk factors, cost projections, and timeline with clear milestones.
Architecture design
Cloud-native architecture leveraging managed services, auto-scaling, multi-region deployment, and security best practices. Designs balance performance, cost, operational complexity, and compliance requirements.
Phased migration
Staged rollouts starting with non-production environments, progressing to production with canary deployments or blue-green strategies. Each phase includes validation gates and rollback procedures.
Optimization and handoff
Post-migration optimization based on real usage data, comprehensive monitoring setup, cost tracking, and team training to ensure independent operation of cloud infrastructure.
Cloud platform expertise
Amazon Web Services
EC2, ECS, Lambda, RDS, CloudFront, S3, Route 53, IAM, CloudWatch, and infrastructure as code with CloudFormation or Terraform.
Microsoft Azure
App Service, Azure Functions, SQL Database, Azure CDN, Traffic Manager, Active Directory, and ARM templates for infrastructure provisioning.
Google Cloud Platform
Compute Engine, Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, Cloud SQL, Cloud CDN, Cloud Load Balancing, and deployment automation with Deployment Manager.
Common migration scenarios
Legacy data center to cloud
Migrate from on-premises infrastructure to cloud platforms, modernizing architecture while maintaining business continuity and improving disaster recovery capabilities.
Multi-cloud strategy
Design and implement multi-cloud architectures leveraging strengths of different providers while maintaining operational consistency and avoiding vendor lock-in.
Cloud modernization
Transform existing cloud workloads from basic VM hosting to cloud-native architectures using containers, serverless, managed services, and infrastructure as code.
Ready to start your project?
Let's discuss how we can help modernize your web presence and deliver measurable results for your organization.