What is a cloud migration readiness assessment?
A cloud migration readiness assessment helps organisations understand whether applications, data, infrastructure, security, governance and teams are ready to move to AWS or Azure. It should check:
- Application dependencies
- Data risk
- Security requirements
- Identity and access
- Backup and recovery
- Compliance obligations
- Migration cost assumptions
- Operational readiness
- Timeline risk
- Internal capability
The goal is not just to decide whether cloud migration is possible. It is to understand what preparation is needed to make migration safer, faster and more predictable.
Why migration readiness matters before moving to AWS or Azure
Cloud migration can improve scalability, resilience, automation, security and speed of delivery. But without readiness planning, organisations often face:
- Higher than expected cloud bills
- Longer migration timelines
- Security gaps
- Application downtime
- Missed dependencies
- Poor performance after migration
- Weak monitoring
- Confusion over ownership
- Incomplete backup and recovery
- Compliance evidence gaps
AWS migration readiness considerations
- Landing zone design
- IAM and permission model
- VPC / network design
- EC2, ECS, EKS, Lambda, RDS or other service selection
- Backup and disaster recovery
- CloudWatch monitoring
- Cost Explorer and budgets
- Security Hub / GuardDuty considerations
- Data transfer and migration windows
- Well-Architected principles
Azure migration readiness considerations
- Azure landing zone
- Microsoft Entra ID
- Subscription and management group structure
- RBAC
- Networking and connectivity
- Azure Monitor
- Azure Backup
- Defender for Cloud
- Cost Management
- Azure Migrate
- Governance through policies and tagging
Application readiness: the biggest hidden migration risk
Applications are rarely isolated. They depend on databases, APIs, file storage, authentication, scheduled jobs, third-party integrations, reporting tools, legacy services, network routes, users and operational processes. Before migration, teams should know what each application does, who owns it, what it depends on, what data it uses, how it is tested, and what happens if it fails.
Data migration risk
Data is often the hardest part of migration because it affects downtime, compliance, performance, backup, storage cost and business continuity. Consider data volume, sensitivity, residency, retention requirements, backup and recovery, migration window, synchronisation approach, and validation after migration.
Security readiness
Security should not be added after migration. It should be designed into the landing zone, identity model, network model, logging approach and operational process. Plan for MFA, privileged access, least privilege, network segmentation, logging, alerting, encryption, key management, compliance evidence and incident response.
Cost risk in cloud migration
Cloud migration does not automatically reduce cost. It can reduce waste and improve flexibility if designed and operated properly. Common cost risks include oversized compute, storage growth, data transfer, licensing, backup, monitoring tools, dual-running, support, poor tagging, no budget alerts and lack of ownership.
Governance maturity
Governance means knowing who can make decisions, who owns risk, who approves spend, who manages access, and who supports the environment after go-live. Naming standards, tagging, budget ownership, access reviews, backup rules, monitoring standards, change control, security sign-off, incident management and post-migration support all matter.
How to use your migration readiness score
- Identify weakest areas
- Build a migration preparation checklist
- Decide if discovery is needed
- Prioritise risk reduction
- Create a business case
- Compare AWS and Azure options
- Decide whether to rehost, replatform, refactor, retain or retire workloads
When to get expert help
Expert help is useful when dependencies are unclear, business-critical systems are involved, data is sensitive or regulated, downtime tolerance is low, costs are uncertain, internal cloud skills are limited, governance is immature, the migration timeline is fixed, or AWS/Azure architecture decisions are unclear.