Cloud migration: from on-premises to Azure or AWS with minimal impact

What is Cloud Migration?

Migrating to the cloud is much more than copying servers to a cloud provider. It requires understanding the current infrastructure, assessing which workloads benefit from the cloud, designing the target architecture, planning the transition in phases, and executing with validation and rollback at every step to minimize the impact on day-to-day operations. At Q2BSTUDIO we accompany companies throughout the migration process to Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

The project begins with an assessment: we would inventory servers, applications, databases, dependencies, data volumes and usage patterns. We evaluate each workload against cloud compatibility, performance, security, and cost criteria to recommend the most appropriate migration strategy: lift and shift for applications that move as is, replatforming for those that adapt to managed services, or refactoring for those that benefit from restructuring.

Before moving the first load, we designed the landing zone: the base structure of network, identity, governance, security, and policies that will receive the migrated resources. A well-defined landing zone prevents each migration from being done ad-hoc and ensures that new resources are born with the correct security, naming, tagging, and access policies.

The migration is executed in phases, starting with the least critical loads to validate the architecture and procedures before moving production systems. Each phase includes data replication, parallel testing, functional and performance validation, and a rollback plan that allows you to return to the previous state if something doesn't work as expected. The goal is for migration to be a controlled event, not an adventure.

Databases are migrated using engine-specific tools (Azure Database Migration Service, AWS DMS) and validated with data comparison, performance testing, and integrity verification. Applications are reconfigured to target new endpoints and tested end-to-end before the final cutoff.

The network is designed with segmentation, security groups, peering, and connectivity to the local network if the scenario is hybrid (site-to-site VPN, ExpressRoute, Direct Connect). Access is managed with Azure AD or IAM and the principle of least privilege is applied.

After migration, we optimize right-sizing so you're not paying for underutilized capacity. We set up monitoring, alerting, and backups, and provide documentation of the new architecture.

We don't promise seamless migrations – any migration of real systems has risks. What we do ensure is exhaustive planning, controlled execution, available rollback and total transparency about the status at all times.

After the migration, we accompany with a stabilization period where we monitor performance, costs and availability of the new environment, adjusting configuration and resolving incidents derived from the change before formally closing the project.

If the migration includes applications that require partial rewriting or adaptation to native cloud services, we coordinate with the development team to execute those changes within the same project plan.