Cloud Migration Roadmap: A Step-by-Step Guide for Indian Enterprises

## Why Indian Enterprises Are Moving to the Cloud The Indian cloud market is projected to reach $13 billion by 2026, and for good reason. Cloud infrastructure offers elastic scalability, pay-as-you-go economics, built-in disaster recovery, and access to managed services (AI, databases, analytics) that would take years to build in-house. But migration without a roadmap is a recipe for cost overruns, security gaps, and extended downtime. Here's the 6-phase approach we use: ### Phase 1: Assessment & Discovery (2--3 Weeks) Catalogue every application, database, and infrastructure component. Classify each as one of the "6 Rs": Rehost, Replatform, Refactor, Repurchase, Retire, or Retain. This classification determines the migration strategy for each workload. ### Phase 2: Business Case & Cost Modelling Build a detailed TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) comparison between on-premise and cloud. Include often-overlooked costs: networking, data transfer, managed service fees, and the human cost of maintaining on-premise hardware. We typically find 25--40% cost savings for mid-size enterprises. ### Phase 3: Architecture Design Design the target cloud architecture with security, scalability, and cost optimisation in mind. Key decisions include VPC design, multi-AZ deployment, database selection (managed vs. self-hosted), and identity/access management. Follow the cloud provider's Well-Architected Framework. ### Phase 4: Security & Compliance Implement cloud-native security controls: encryption at rest and in transit, IAM policies with least-privilege access, network segmentation, and audit logging. For regulated industries, ensure compliance with RBI, HIPAA, or SOC 2 requirements. ### Phase 5: Migration Execution Execute migrations in waves, starting with low-risk, non-production workloads. Use database migration services for zero-downtime database moves. Run parallel environments for critical applications and switch traffic only after validation. ### Phase 6: Optimisation & Operations Post-migration, implement cost monitoring (AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management), right-size instances, purchase reserved capacity for predictable workloads, and establish operational runbooks for common scenarios. ### Common Pitfalls to Avoid - **Lift-and-shift everything:** Some workloads should be refactored, not just rehosted - **Ignoring egress costs:** Data transfer out of the cloud can be expensive - **Over-provisioning:** Right-size from day one; don't replicate your on-premise over-provisioning in the cloud *Planning a cloud migration? [Schedule a free assessment](/contact) with our certified cloud architects.*