Cloud Covered 2025: Cloud Migration

One of the most significant conundrums faced by any organisation that plans a cloud migration is that there are many clouds to choose from, each with its own variables relating to performance, features, and cost.

Rarely does an organisation get this decision entirely right the first time, and rarely too does an organisation’s changing needs not lead it to consider changing its decision later.

Hence when it comes to discussing cloud migration, it is important to look at not just migration into the cloud, but migration between clouds.

The prevalence for organisations to use more than one cloud provider is reflected in a Statista report that found 86 percent of respondents stated that their organisation used a multi-cloud strategy as they sought to achieve better cost control and optimised performance.

But where once a multi-cloud strategy might have been adopted as a risk mitigation strategy, the increasing reliability of cloud service providers meant today migrations were being undertaken for very different reasons.

Meeting cost expectations

According to Gartner director analyst Adrian Wong, many organisations that sought a multi-cloud strategy did so seeking a cost benefit. However, few would find one.

“I’ve spoken to a bunch of organisations who thought having a second cloud provider would give them more negotiating leverage, but largely speaking, that’s not the case,” Wong said.

“[Cloud providers] are going to give you discounts based off your total committed spend, and if you start splitting that, you are going to get less of a discount.”

Wong identified a second downside of multi-cloud as being the added requirement for supporting personnel, as each new provider required its own unique set of skills.

“If you are going to be looking at multi-cloud it is going to be expensive, it is going to be complex, and it is going to be an ongoing effort that you are going to have to continually invest in and maintain,” Wong said.

“So as much as possible, stay on a single cloud provider.”

While the costs of a multi-cloud strategy might prove difficult to manage, that doesn’t mean that cost management isn’t also a driver for cloud migration, as this was one of several factors that led the diversified comparison platform company Finder to migrate its entire environment from one public cloud provider to another last year.

“The rationale behind that was being able to gain a tighter control over our costs, and simplification of our infrastructure,” said Finder’s chief technology officer Joe Waller, adding that the company’s extensive used of containerisation meant it could run on any cloud platform.