Smart Cloud Migration Strategies to Avoid Common Pitfalls

Moving to Microsoft Azure should transform your business, not just relocate your problems to someone else’s data centre. Yet that’s exactly what happens when organisations rush into cloud migration without a proper cloud migration strategy. 

If you’ve been wondering how to get the most out of your move to Azure, you’re asking the right question. Understanding that migration is an opportunity (not just a technical exercise) is the real key to unlocking business value. 

Elliott, our Principal Architect, breaks down key cloud migration strategies in our latest video. Watch below for his in-depth walkthrough or read on for the key insights that could save you thousands and transform how your technology serves your business. 

We’ve all heard the horror stories. Companies lift and shift their entire infrastructure to Azure, only to find their monthly bills have tripled whilst performance has barely improved. Their legacy applications still creak along, just now with added latency. The promised agility and innovation? Nowhere to be seen. 

This happens because many organisations treat cloud migration as a moving exercise rather than a transformation opportunity. They’re so focused on getting to the cloud quickly that they forget to ask whether they’re moving the right things in the right way. 

The truth is, not everything needs to move to the cloud. And what does move doesn’t necessarily need to stay exactly as it is. That’s where strategic migration comes in. 

Every application in your estate can benefit from its own cloud migration strategy. We recommend the 5 R’s framework to help you make the right choice for each workload: 

• Rehost (lift and shift): Move your workloads as they are with minimal changes. Perfect for stable applications that just need to be in the cloud quickly. 

• Replatform: Make small tweaks to use Azure services, like moving your database to Azure SQL. You get some cloud benefits without major rearchitecting. 

• Refactor: Completely rearchitect your application for the cloud. Think breaking monoliths into microservices or embracing containers. Maximum benefit, but a lot of effort. 

• Repurchase: Sometimes it’s smarter to swap your old application for a SaaS solution like Dynamics 365. Why maintain what you can subscribe to? 

• Retire: Here’s the one everyone forgets—sometimes the smartest move is to switch something off entirely. That reporting system nobody’s touched in two years? Maybe it’s time to let it go. 

One size never fits all. Your ERP system might be better as a SaaS, whilst your customer-facing web app could benefit from complete refactoring. The key is making deliberate choices rather than defaulting to lift and shift for everything. 

Imagine a spectrum with rehosting on the left and refactoring on the right. As you move right, you unlock more cloud-native benefits—auto-scaling, resilience, managed services and so on. But you also take on more complexity and upfront investment. 

The sweet spot is different for every application. A stable internal tool that works perfectly well might just need rehosting. But that customer-facing application struggling with peak loads? It could transform your business if refactored to use Azure’s platform services. 

The further you move towards cloud-native, the greater your long-term rewards—but only if it’s the right fit. It’s certainly possible to waste months refactoring applications that would’ve been perfectly fine with a simple replatform. 

One of the biggest mistakes you see is firms moving their on-prem infrastructure straight to the cloud, as is, leading to over-provisioning. That server running at 10% CPU utilisation? It’ll still be wasting 90% of its capacity in Azure—except now you’re paying for it by the hour. 

The cloud gives you the power to rightsize, matching resources to your actual needs rather than your worst-case scenarios. Just because your VM has 32 cores and 128GB of RAM today doesn’t mean it needs that tomorrow. Newer CPU versions give you better performance per core, and Azure’s detailed metrics make rightsizing easier than ever. 

Consider these cost-saving opportunities: 

• Use auto-scaling to pay only for what you use during peak times 

• Take advantage of reserved instances for predictable workloads 

• Make use of Azure Hybrid Benefit if you have existing licences 

• Implement proper tagging and cost management from day one 

• Use Azure Advisor Cost Recommendations for more tips on reducing your bills

Remember: every pound you save on oversized infrastructure is a pound you can invest elsewhere in the business. (Check out our guide to Azure Cost Optimisation for more on this.) 

Modernising applications to use Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) or microservices architecture can unlock incredible agility and resilience. But it’s not always the right choice. 

PaaS lets you offload infrastructure management entirely. Instead of managing VMs running SQL Server, for example, you use Azure SQL Database. You stop patching servers and start focusing on your data. It’s great for teams who want to build rather than maintain. 

Microservices let you scale and update parts of your application independently. So, for example, your payment processing can scale for Black Friday while your user profile service stays steady. But beware: microservices add complexity. They’re perfect for applications that need to scale fast or change often, but overkill for stable, monolithic applications that work just fine. 

Some companies try to microservice everything, only to drown in the operational complexity. Modernisation is a superpower, but only when it’s applied with purpose. 

Availability is important for making sure your business keeps its promises to customers. Azure solidifies your business continuity with multiple levels of protection: 

• Local availability protects against hardware failures within a data centre. So your VM would move to different hardware if something fails. 

• Zonal availability shields you from entire data centre outages. Your applications run across multiple availability zones within a region. 

• Regional availability prepares you for large-scale disasters. Your application can fail over to a completely different geographic zone. 

For the ultimate protection, you can combine regional and zonal strategies; multiple regions, with multiple data centres in each. 

But not every application needs regional failover. Design for the level of availability your business actually needs. For an internal time-tracking tool, local availability might be fine. Your e-commerce platform, though? That probably needs the full works. 

Ready to make sure your cloud migration delivers real value? Here’s your roadmap: 

1. Rationalise first: Audit your applications and decide which of the 5 R’s applies to each. Not everything needs to move, and not everything should be modernised.
   
2. Rightsize ruthlessly: Use Azure’s flexibility to cut costs and boost performance. Start small and scale up based on actual usage.
3. Modernise where it matters: Make use of PaaS and microservices for apps that’ll really benefit. Skip the complexity for everything else.
4. Design for appropriate availability: Choose local, zonal, or regional strategies based on business impact, not technical possibilities.
5. Iterate and improve: Cloud migration is a journey. Start with quick wins, learn from each migration, and continuously optimise. 

The smartest migrations are those that deliver business value, not just technical change. You don’t need to use every Azure service available—focus on using the right ones for your use cases. 

Cloud migration is your chance to rethink and reshape how tech serves your business. Choose the right path for each workload, and you’ll unlock the true value of Azure. 

At Synextra, we specialise in helping UK businesses navigate their cloud journey without the complexity. We bring the human touch to Azure migration, helping you make decisions that actually make sense for your business, not just what looks good on a slide deck. 

Whether you’re planning your first move to Azure or looking to optimise what’s already there, we’d love to chat about how we can help. Get in touch to find out more.