Practical steps to migrate applications to the cloud with minimal interruption and predictable cost.

Stage 1 — Discovery & Assessment

• Inventory applications and dependencies (databases, queues, third-party APIs).
• Estimate performance characteristics and peak loads.
• Identify compliance requirements and data residency concerns.

Stage 2 — Strategy & Design

• Decide migration pattern: Rehost, Replatform, Refactor, or Replace.
• Design for high availability zones and backups.
• Define rollback and cutover plans; test restores frequently.

Stage 3 — Security & Governance

• Implement IAM with least-privilege roles.
• Enable encryption at rest and in transit.
• Set up centralized logging and monitoring (CloudWatch/Stackdriver/Elastic).

Stage 4 — Cost Control

• Right-size instances; use reserved or spot instances when appropriate.
• Use autoscaling for workloads that vary.
• Review storage class (S3 standard vs infrequent access).

Stage 5 — Cutover & Validation

1. Perform staged cutover (non-peak first).
2. Run performance tests and validate data integrity.
3. Monitor for errors, latency and cost—keep the rollback plan ready.

Checklist summary

Discovery → Strategy → Security → Cost → Cutover. At every step, involve business owners and test thoroughly.

If you want a migration plan customized to your systems, contact VMB for a migration readiness assessment.