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Scorecard

Is Your Business Ready for Cloud Migration?

Flexera State of the Cloud research consistently identifies inadequate planning, underestimated application compatibility, and missing FinOps capability as the top drivers of cloud-migration overruns. Score your migration readiness across current infrastructure, application compatibility, data and security, team skills, and budget and business drivers to surface the gaps to close before the migration begins.

Last updated: May 2026

Cloud migration readiness is a scored assessment of whether a business has the foundations to migrate successfully to cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP) without expensive overruns or post-migration operational pain. Readiness = (Current Infrastructure) + (Application Compatibility) + (Data and Security) + (Team Skills) + (Budget and Business Drivers). Typical mid-market cloud migration timeline typically target 6-18 months with strong planning.

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What is Cloud Migration Readiness?

Cloud migration readiness is a scored assessment of whether a business has the foundations to migrate successfully to cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP) without expensive overruns or post-migration operational pain. It covers current infrastructure inventory, application compatibility and migration tier per app, data classification and cloud-native security, team cloud and FinOps skills, and budget plus specific business drivers tied to a measurable outcome.

The Formula

Readiness = (Current Infrastructure) + (Application Compatibility) + (Data and Security) + (Team Skills) + (Budget and Business Drivers)

Worked Example

A 200-employee business has mixed on-premise plus SaaS infrastructure, partial inventory, most core apps have cloud options, no application migration tiers documented, informal data classification, a few cloud-experienced staff, no FinOps training, rough budget estimate, and migration tied to hardware end-of-life in 14 months.

Current Infrastructure: mixed, partial inventory (medium)
Application Compatibility: cloud options exist, no tiers documented (medium)
Data and Security: informal classification (low to medium)
Team Skills: some experience, no FinOps (medium)
Budget and Business Drivers: rough budget, clear business driver (medium)

📌 Composite readiness lands in the workable lower-middle range. Highest-leverage pre-migration work: complete infrastructure inventory and document migration tier per application, formalize data classification with cloud handling rules, train the team on FinOps and the target cloud platform, and tighten the budget with year-one operations included. With these foundations the 14-month timeline is realistic.

Why This Matters

Cloud migrations without planning routinely overrun

Flexera State of the Cloud Report and Gartner cloud-migration research consistently show that migrations without inventory, application-compatibility analysis, and FinOps capability run 30-100%+ over budget. The discovery and inventory phase is materially cheaper to do upfront than to handle as scope-creep during execution.

Cloud is not automatically cheaper than on-premise

Without disciplined FinOps practice (cost monitoring, right-sizing, reserved capacity, auto-shutdown of non-production), cloud spend frequently exceeds equivalent on-premise costs. The cost benefit of cloud emerges through operational discipline, not from the migration itself.

Common Mistakes

❌ Treating migration as a one-time project without operations planning

Cloud operations after migration differ materially from on-premise operations; without team training and operational planning, post-migration cost surprises and operational pain consistently emerge. Year-one operations planning belongs in the migration budget.

❌ Lift-and-shift for everything regardless of application fit

Some applications benefit from rehosting (lift-and-shift), others from refactoring to cloud-native, and some should be retired entirely in favor of SaaS replacements. Migration tier per application is the planning artifact that prevents the most expensive migration mistakes.

Industry Benchmarks

Category	Good	Average	Poor
Typical mid-market cloud migration timeline	6-18 months with strong planning	12-24 months	Over 36 months or compressed under 6 months
Cloud-migration budget overruns	Under 15% over plan with strong FinOps	30-50% over plan	100%+ over plan
Post-migration cloud cost discipline	Monthly FinOps review with right-sizing	Quarterly review	No FinOps practice, cost surprises

Source: Flexera State of the Cloud Report, Gartner cloud-migration research, and FinOps Foundation State of FinOps surveys

Benchmark data sourced from Flexera State of the Cloud Report, Gartner cloud-migration research, and FinOps Foundation State of FinOps surveys.

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One of the most common mistakes we see when working with clients: treating migration as a one-time project without operations planning. Cloud operations after migration differ materially from on-premise operations; without team training and operational planning, post-migration cost surprises and operational pain consistently emerge. Year-one operations planning belongs in the migration budget.

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Frequently Asked Questions

When should a business migrate to the cloud?

Common triggers: hardware end-of-life, an acquisition or major growth event, regulatory or contractual cloud requirements, modernization of legacy applications, or a clear cost or agility business case. Migrating without a specific business driver frequently produces expensive moves that did not need to happen; tying the migration to a specific business outcome is the foundation.

How long does a typical cloud migration take?

Gartner cloud-migration research places typical mid-market migrations at 6-18 months end-to-end, depending on application count, complexity, data volume, and team capacity. Migrations compressed into shorter timelines without prerequisite readiness routinely overrun on cost and produce operational pain post-migration that takes years to unwind.

What is the difference between rehosting, refactoring, and retiring an application?

Rehosting (lift-and-shift) moves the application as-is to cloud infrastructure with minimal change. Refactoring rebuilds parts of the application for cloud-native operation (databases, scaling, services). Retiring removes the application entirely when a SaaS replacement or business-process change eliminates the need. Most migration plans use a mix; the right mix depends on application priority and cloud-readiness per app.

How much should cloud cost compared with on-premise?

Cloud is not automatically cheaper than on-premise; without disciplined FinOps practice (cost monitoring, right-sizing, reserved capacity, auto-shutdown of non-production), cloud spend frequently exceeds equivalent on-premise costs. Mature cloud operations with FinOps discipline typically deliver agility and scale benefits at comparable or modestly lower TCO over a 3-5 year window.

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