Cloud migration has become a core part of digital transformation. This article serves as a guide for developing your cloud migration strategy and executing the steps towards a cloud-native experience.
There are several approaches to adopting cloud technology:
We will focus on the third approach – the full native transformation – with a closer look at strategies, pitfalls and success factors.
Once your cloud adoption strategy is clear, the next step is to define exactly how your applications and systems will evolve within that framework. This is where technology strategy and modernization roadmaps come into play.
Most technology transformation efforts align with the well-known 7Rs framework:
Each path provides different benefits and demands. For the purposes of this article, we will look at the following two paths:
Choosing the right strategy requires evaluating regulatory demands, internal maturity, available skills and long-term goals. Organizations in regulated industries may benefit from a cautious replatforming approach, while more agile players may push toward rearchitecting and reimagining core systems.
By tying technology modernization directly to your chosen adoption strategy, you ensure that all decisions – from tooling to governance – are consistent with your organization’s overall goals.
People are often considered the easy part – “just hire consultants” – but success depends on internal buy-in, defined responsibilities and clear incentives.
It’s essential to secure commitment from leadership and other key stakeholders. When delivery involves external partners, roles and expectations must be clearly communicated. To promote ownership and maintain momentum in migration efforts, incentives should be established across all levels of the organization.
Partnering with a migration partner like Vivicta – and moving to a migration factory-based model with clear goals and timelines – can help to alleviate the load on internal teams and business owners. Migration partners offer the benefit of scalable resources and targeted expertise, without adding long-term overhead once the migration is complete.
While you may have the right technology and people in place for a cloud migration, company processes often remain outdated and inflexible.
The key challenges usually arise in:
To overcome process inertia, we suggest the following steps:
The goal is intelligent automation, a central theme of Platform Engineering.
Platform Engineering ensures consistent governance, speeds up onboarding and reduces the cognitive load on developers. This helps to streamline migrations by:
Migration success is often derailed by poor developer onboarding.
Developers need top notch documentation, as well as fast access to developer tools & environments. They also require a productized Continuous Integration & Continuous Deployment Pipeline (CI/CD), with a clear view of the architectural landscape and design of the landing zones.
These can be coupled with Platform Engineering, creating and maintaining a “golden path” for analysts, developers and product owners. This path, coupled with well documented patterns for cloud adoption, is a key ingredient in enabling rapid cloud adoption.
A well-functioning onboarding process improves developer satisfaction and shortens time-to-productivity.
To make sense of architectural choices, organizations should adopt ADRs to:
ADRs are vital for knowledge transfer and governance in complex transformations. Setting up an Architectural Review Board (ARB) with a regular cadence will play a key role in making the right decisions. Including both partner and cloud provider architects in this group is a good way to ensure that best practices are followed.
Learn more about Enterprise Architecture.
Cloud migrations need real-time, transparent reporting. Analysts, architects, executive and other key stakeholders all want to see:
Live dashboards, regular updates and KPI-based tracking promote alignment and maintain momentum.
While tools may seem like the biggest challenge, technology is often the most manageable element of migration – if properly scoped.
Define:
The key is not strict standardization, but clear direction. Teams need to know where you're going in 5–7 years, and how their choices today support that journey.
Successful cloud migration isn’t about technology alone. It’s about aligning strategy, people, process and architecture under a shared goal.
By adopting clear migration strategies, incentivizing transformation and leveraging Platform Engineering as a guiding structure, organizations can:
Are you ready to go full native, or do you need help with setting everything up for success?
We can help.
Whether you're just beginning or are deep into your transformation journey, our experts in Platform Engineering, DevSecOps and Cloud Architecture are ready to support you. Let’s design a migration path that fits your business, removes roadblocks and sets you up for long-term success.
Contact us to learn more – and make the cloud your competitive advantage.
Head of Software Development Finland, Vivicta Niklas Liljestrand leads software development teams & experts, driving enterprise-wide transformation across business processes, applications, and infrastructure. With extensive experience in software development and a strong background in cloud migrations, DevOps, and Agile methodologies, Niklas excels in guiding his teams of experts to deliver customer-centric IT solutions independent of the runtime environment.