Moving virtual machines from a data centre to AWS or Azure is not cloud migration — it is infrastructure relocation. True cloud migration means redesigning workloads to take advantage of cloud-native capabilities: elastic scaling, managed services, consumption-based pricing, and built-in resilience.

After supporting cloud migrations across dozens of enterprise environments, the failure patterns are consistent. Most failed migrations share at least one of these five characteristics.

The migrations that deliver on cloud's promise follow a disciplined process: assess workloads against a cloud-readiness framework, categorise them by migration strategy (rehost, replatform, refactor, retire), sequence the migration to minimise risk, and measure outcomes against defined business metrics — not just uptime.

Migration is not the end. Cloud environments require ongoing governance: cost optimisation, security posture management, performance tuning, and continuous alignment with business needs.