The Road to Cloud Success: Why Migrations Often Fail

Are you struggling with your cloud migration? You are not alone. At BCG Platinion, we’ve found that most businesses face barriers trying to develop and implement seamless cloud projects. Yet, it is clear to all of them that the main question concerning cloud has shifted from an “if” to a “how”. Today’s landscape has rapidly accelerated digital transformation through cloud adoption. The C-suite are well aware of the value of the cloud, to such a great degree that most CIOs and CTOs see it as an imperative for maintaining continuous IT competitiveness.

This is an introduction to a series of articles, focused on demonstrating effective and sustainable cloud adoption, and exploring the various stages that contribute to a successful cloud migration.

Our Experience

Recent examples from our client work shows that cloud projects often miss their planned objectives and result in unintended negative outcomes.

Across the span of these cases, we see five different elements that companies usually either underestimate or fail to consider when planning and executing a cloud migration project.

We observed common pitfalls across five cloud pillars that limit value realization of cloud

To build a solid business case for cloud adoption, it’s crucial to avoid common pitfalls that could lead to a flawed cost analysis and missed opportunities. Some common pitfalls to watch out for include:

• Narrowly focusing on comparing on-premises costs with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) costs, without considering the total cost of ownership
• Failing to consider transformation opportunities, such as adopting cloud-native assets like Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), which can result in more significant cost savings and operational efficiencies
• Not accounting for hidden costs associated with the migration process, such as unused public IPs or network traffic within virtual machines or across regions

Lack of proper planning is another primary pitfall. Companies that plan too much in advance risk wasting time and resources on a strategy that will soon become obsolete, while those that do not plan enough risk failure due to a lack of direction and guidance.

Organizations that attempt to replicate the legacy enterprise data centre in the cloud also face disadvantages. Some examples include:

• Limiting themselves to lift and shift migration, rather than launching application transformation programs
• Not updating the operating model (processes, people skills and tools) and slowing down teams, limiting experimentation and innovation and making it more difficult to benefit from cloud technology

Despite these risks, cloud migration is nowadays a strategic imperative for most, as it can yield significant benefits such as:

1. ‍ Reduced IT spend achieved by application and technology portfolio rationalization‍
2. Focus on core capabilities by decommissioning on-premises infrastructure and adoption of serverless architecture.
3. Advanced data analytics facilitated thanks to availability of dynamic computing and storage resources.
4. Increased agility and speed by replacing legacy applications with SaaS.
5. Cutting edge technology more easily accessible (technology democratization) thanks to native cloud services and product e.g., generative AI API, machine learning, automated reports, and cost reduction recommendations.

Cloud adoption is a key imperative within Digital Transformation—for many reasons

Mastering the journey to cloud success

Other benefits of the cloud include:

• Cloud elasticity allowing companies to launch and scale new services within seconds rather than months
• New pricing models enabling lower pricing points, and the ability to avoid large upfront investments
• IT operations excellence through the standardization, automation, and simplification of processes via managed services. The availability of technical templates enables standardization, simplification of incident resolution, and a reduction in IT efforts. This allows resources to be allocated to more valuable applications
• Business resilience thank to built-in high availability features ensuring a relevant reduction in service disruptions, while simultaneously increasing business continuity. This helps organizations develop an improved disaster recovery strategy.

These factors and others combine to make cloud technology highly cost-effective, especially when the correct cost control mechanisms are in place.

The journey to the cloud can be a complex and challenging process, but by using the right approach it can also be a major catalyst for business transformation and growth.

To ensure a successful cloud migration, companies need to pay particular attention to the three main phases of their cloud journey:

Build, Scale-up, and innovate.