How to Plan a Cloud Migration (Stop Asking AWS vs Azure vs GCP)

TL;DR: To plan a cloud migration, start with an application portfolio assessment, not a provider comparison. Inventory every workload, write down why you are moving, and assign each workload one of the 7 Rs. AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud all put assessment first in their own frameworks. Only then compare AWS, Azure and GCP.

Every cloud migration conversation starts the same way. Someone opens a tab, types "AWS vs Azure vs GCP," and spends the next two hours reading comparison charts about pricing tiers and uptime SLAs.

It feels productive. It isn't. Picking a provider before you've done anything else is like choosing moving trucks before you've decided what's coming with you, what's being sold, and what's going straight in the bin.

"Picking a cloud provider before assessing your workloads is like hiring movers before you know what's in the house."

This guide shows you how to plan a cloud migration in the right order: the three questions to answer first, a five-minute worksheet to get started, the questions that make the provider choice easy, and the planning steps that take you from assessment to cutover.

Why "which provider" is the wrong first question

Most "AWS vs Azure" debates are unanswerable in the abstract, because the right answer depends entirely on what you're moving. A provider that's perfect for your customer-facing app might be the wrong fit for your legacy database. Comparing providers before knowing that isn't research. It's procrastination that feels like progress.

It also sets you up to make the decision backwards: choosing a vendor, then forcing every workload to fit whatever that vendor does best, instead of choosing the right approach per workload and letting the provider decision follow.

The cloud providers agree, which is a little ironic coming from them. Each one's own migration framework puts assessment before anything else:

If the people selling the cloud tell you to assess first, the provider comparison can wait.

How to plan a cloud migration: 3 questions before you compare anything

A cloud migration assessment, also called an application portfolio assessment, is a structured review of every application, database and dependency you run, why each one matters, and what should happen to it in the cloud. These three questions are its core.

1. What do you actually have?

Not a vague sense of "we run some servers and an app." A real inventory: every application, every database, every dependency, and how they connect to each other. Most teams are surprised by what turns up: forgotten internal tools, a database nobody remembers the login for, a service someone set up three engineers ago and never documented.

You don't have to build this by hand. Each provider offers free or low-cost discovery tooling: AWS Application Discovery Service and Migration Evaluator, Azure Migrate, and Google Cloud Migration Center.

For tool-by-tool detail, see AWS migration services explained and Azure migration services explained [Q7: confirm Azure URL].

2. Why do you actually want to move?

"Everyone else is on cloud" is not a strategy. Cost reduction, compliance pressure, scaling limits and better reliability are all valid reasons, but each points toward a different priority.

• Compliance: data residency matters more than shaving 10% off compute cost. In India, RBI rules keep payment data in the country; in Canada, Quebec's Law 25 adds checks before personal data leaves the province.
• Cost: it changes which workloads move first, usually the ones with the clearest saving.
• Scale or reliability: customer-facing workloads move first, with more investment in architecture.

Write your why down before step three. It keeps the whole project honest.

3. What does each workload actually need? The 7 Rs

This is where the 7 Rs of cloud migration come in, a model popularised by AWS and now used across the industry. Not every workload gets the same treatment, and that's the point:

Notice none of these seven require you to have picked a cloud provider yet. That's not an accident. It's the entire point of doing the assessment first.

"The best cloud migrations start with a spreadsheet, not a sales call." "The best cloud migrations start with a spreadsheet, not a sales call."

Try it yourself: a 5-minute cloud readiness worksheet

Before your next "which cloud provider" conversation, list your top five workloads and answer three quick questions for each. You'll likely find you don't need one answer. You need five different ones.

Only now should you open that "AWS vs Azure vs GCP" tab

Once you know what's moving and how, comparing providers becomes a much shorter, much more useful exercise. Ask practical questions instead of abstract ones:

• Which provider does your team already have real, hands-on experience with?
• Which one do your target enterprise or BFSI clients already standardise on?
• Which one has regions that meet your data residency rules in India, Canada or the US?
• Which one offers the strongest startup credit or migration funding program for your stage?
• Which one has better native tooling for the specific R you assigned to your hardest workload?

These are far more answerable than "which cloud is best." That's what doing the assessment first buys you.

How AWS, Azure and Google Cloud tend to differ

Use this as a starting point once your assessment is done, not as the decision itself.

Running workloads on more than one cloud is common too. The assessment tells you whether a single provider or a multi-cloud setup fits better.

Then plan the move itself: from assessment to cutover

The assessment and provider choice are the first half of a cloud migration plan. The second half turns decisions into a schedule:

1. Build the business case. Compare today's running cost with the projected cloud cost per workload, including migration effort. Funding programs such as MAP or Azure Accelerate can change the numbers, so check them here.
2. Set up the landing zone. Accounts or subscriptions, networking, identity and security policies, in place before the first workload moves.
3. Plan migration waves. Group workloads by dependency and risk. Start with a low-risk pilot, learn from it, then move the rest in waves.
4. Treat databases as their own workstream. They carry the most risk and usually need the most testing.
5. Cut over, then optimise. Test before each cutover, then right-size and track cost from the first workload, not three months in. Our cloud cost optimization guide [Q7: confirm slug] covers what to check.

Common cloud migration planning mistakes

• Choosing the provider first. Every later decision then bends to fit it.
• Treating every workload the same. One blanket strategy wastes money on apps that should have been retired or repurchased.
• Skipping the dependency map. Moving an app without the database or service it quietly relies on is the most common cause of a failed cutover.
• No written "why". Without it, nobody can tell whether the migration succeeded.
• Ignoring data residency until late. Region choice affects architecture, so it belongs in the assessment, not the final week.

Skip the spreadsheet paralysis. We'll build it with you.

HabileLabs is an AWS Advanced Tier Partner with Generative AI and SMB Competency, a Microsoft Solutions Partner and a Google Cloud Select Partner, with 200+ AWS customer launches and 160+ cloud journeys delivered. Because we work across all three clouds, we run the application portfolio assessment first, assign the right migration strategy per workload, and only then help you choose the provider and architecture that actually fits, not the other way around.

Two ways to start:

• Want us to plan it with you? Book a free workload assessment before you compare a single cloud provider, or explore our cloud migration services.
• Running it in-house but short on hands? Hire dedicated cloud engineers who join your team directly, with a one-month no-penalty swap guarantee.

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