Congratulations on not being (completely) in the cloud yet!
Sounds strange? But it isn’t.
It makes no difference whether you were the first to move to the cloud (except maybe for people who comment “First!” under YouTube videos…), because the cloud is not a race, it’s a management decision.
While many rushed into the hype years ago and lifted their infrastructure into the cloud via “lift & shift,” you had the advantage of watching from a distance and learning.
You saw budgets explode because no one had a grip on traffic and service costs. You saw the hoped‑for innovation boost suffocated by vendor lock-in. And you witnessed security concepts painfully patched onto architectures that were never designed for them.
You don’t have to make every mistake yourself to learn from them. Now you can do things right from the start, with a plan built on the experiences (and the expensive mistakes) of others.
A pragmatic 3‑step approach that works:
1. Radical analysis instead of blind migration:
Don’t ask: “How do we get everything into the cloud?” Ask: “Which single application or workload truly benefits from scalability, resilience, and the services of a hyperscaler?” Often it’s just 20% that deliver 80% of the value.
2. Architecture before technology:
Define your target architecture first. Only when it’s clear whether your goal is reducing costs, shortening time‑to‑market, or increasing availability should you decide on the path. Does it lead through container orchestration - whether with AWS ECS or Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) - or is a classic VM structure the better fit? Technology follows strategy. Not the other way around.
3. Pilot project instead of big bang:
Start with a clearly defined, measurable project. A successful proof of concept not only delivers technical insights but also builds trust within the organization. This replaces internal debates with facts.
Cloud maturity has little to do with speed. As long as the legacy system still works, you’re in an excellent position to make a strategic decision.
And sometimes it’s simply an advantage not to have been the first. Just ask the worm that got eaten by the early bird whether it might have preferred to stick its head out of the ground a little later!
Cloud migration is just one part of our day-to-day work and it is precisely these experiences that we want to share in our blog. If you want to find out more about how we use technologies, overcome challenges and develop solutions together, take a look at our other posts, e.g. on our practical experiences in the Use of OpenStack in customer projects. Maybe you'll find just the inspiration you need there.
English 
Deutsch