Moving your organisation to the cloud is one of the most significant technology decisions you’ll make. Done well, it reduces costs, improves performance, and gives your business the flexibility to scale. Done poorly, it creates security risks, performance problems, and unexpected costs.
This checklist covers everything Australian enterprises need to consider before, during, and after a cloud migration.
Before You Migrate: Planning and Assessment
1. Define Your Migration Objectives
Before touching a single server, be clear on why you’re migrating to the cloud and what success looks like.
Common objectives include:
- Reducing infrastructure costs
- Improving application performance
- Enabling remote work and collaboration
- Retiring ageing on-premise hardware
- Improving disaster recovery capability
- Enabling scalability for business growth
Document your objectives and use them to evaluate every decision throughout the migration.
2. Conduct a Full Infrastructure Audit
You can’t migrate what you haven’t mapped. Conduct a comprehensive audit of your current environment:
- All servers (physical and virtual) — specifications, operating systems, patch levels
- All applications — dependencies, integrations, licensing models
- All databases — sizes, engines, backup schedules
- Network architecture — bandwidth, connectivity, security controls
- Data volumes and growth rates
- Current infrastructure costs
3. Classify Your Workloads
Not all workloads are equal — and not all are suited to the same cloud approach. Classify each workload:
- Cloud-ready: Modern applications that can move to the cloud with minimal changes (lift-and-shift)
- Cloud-optimised: Applications that benefit from re-platforming to use cloud-native services
- Cloud-native candidates: Applications that should be rebuilt as cloud-native for maximum benefit
- Stay on-premise: Applications that must remain on-premise due to latency, compliance, or technical constraints
4. Choose Your Cloud Strategy
There are five common cloud migration strategies (the “5 Rs”):
- Rehost (Lift-and-shift): Move as-is to the cloud with minimal changes. Fastest and lowest risk.
- Replatform: Make small optimisations to take advantage of cloud capabilities without changing core architecture.
- Repurchase: Move to a different product — typically a SaaS solution.
- Refactor: Re-architect applications to be cloud-native. Highest effort but maximum benefit.
- Retire: Decommission applications that are no longer needed.
5. Select Your Cloud Platform
The three major platforms each have strengths:
- AWS: Broadest service catalogue, largest ecosystem, strongest enterprise adoption globally.
- Microsoft Azure: Best for Microsoft-centric organisations, strong hybrid cloud capabilities, and good compliance tooling for regulated industries.
- Google Cloud Platform: Strong in data analytics, machine learning, and Kubernetes workloads.
Many Australian enterprises use a multi-cloud or hybrid approach — keeping some workloads on-premise while running others in the cloud.
6. Assess Compliance Requirements
Australian enterprises must consider:
- Data sovereignty: Where is your data stored? AWS, Azure, and GCP all have Australian regions (Sydney and Melbourne).
- APRA CPS 234: Financial services organisations must ensure cloud arrangements meet APRA requirements.
- Essential Eight: Government and defence organisations must maintain Essential Eight compliance in cloud environments.
- Privacy Act: Personal information must be handled in accordance with Australian Privacy Principles regardless of where it’s stored.
- Industry-specific requirements: Healthcare (My Health Records), defence (DISP), and other regulated industries have additional requirements.
7. Develop Your Security Architecture
Security in the cloud is a shared responsibility — the cloud provider secures the infrastructure, you secure what you put on it.
Define your cloud security architecture before migration:
- Identity and access management (IAM) — who can access what
- Network security — VPCs, security groups, network ACLs
- Data encryption — at rest and in transit
- Monitoring and logging — CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, or equivalent
- Incident response procedures for cloud environments
8. Plan Your Network Connectivity
How will your offices, remote sites, and users connect to cloud workloads?
Options include:
- Internet-based connectivity (suitable for most cloud-native workloads)
- AWS Direct Connect / Azure ExpressRoute / Google Cloud Interconnect (dedicated private connectivity for latency-sensitive workloads)
- SD-WAN with direct cloud breakout (recommended for multi-site organisations)
9. Define Your Migration Phases
A phased approach reduces risk significantly. Structure your migration in waves:
Wave 1: Low-risk, non-critical workloads (development and test environments, file servers)
Wave 2: Business applications with moderate criticality (collaboration tools, CRM, HR systems)
Wave 3: Mission-critical workloads (ERP, core databases, production applications)
10. Establish Success Metrics
Define how you’ll measure migration success:
- Application performance (response times, availability)
- Cost (actual vs projected cloud spend)
- Security posture (vulnerabilities, incidents)
- User experience (productivity, satisfaction)
- Business continuity (RTO/RPO achievement)
During Migration: Execution Checklist
Pre-Migration (Per Workload)
- Document current state configuration
- Identify and resolve dependencies
- Test backup and restore procedures
- Define rollback plan
- Schedule migration window
- Notify affected stakeholders
- Confirm monitoring is in place
Migration Execution
- Execute migration in the scheduled window
- Validate data integrity post-migration
- Test application functionality
- Verify security controls are active
- Confirm that monitoring and alerting are working
- Update DNS and network routing as required
- Decommission source systems (after validation period)
Post-Migration Validation
- Performance testing against baseline
- Security scan of the migrated environment
- User acceptance testing
- Backup verification
- Cost monitoring — confirm spend is within projections
- Update documentation and CMDB
After Migration: Optimisation Checklist
Cost Optimisation
Cloud costs can spiral without active management.
Implement these controls post-migration:
- Right-size instances based on actual utilisation
- Implement auto-scaling for variable workloads
- Use reserved instances or savings plans for predictable workloads
- Set up cost alerts and budgets
- Review and eliminate unused resources monthly
- Implement tagging for cost allocation
Security Hardening
- Enable cloud security posture management (CSPM)
- Configure cloud-native threat detection (AWS GuardDuty, Azure Defender, etc.)
- Review and tighten IAM permissions
- Enable audit logging across all services
- Conduct penetration testing of the cloud environment
- Review compliance posture against relevant frameworks
Performance Optimisation
- Review application performance metrics
- Optimise database configurations for the cloud
- Implement CDN for internet-facing applications
- Review and optimise network routing
- Consider cloud-native alternatives to migrated services
Operational Readiness
- Train the operations team on cloud management
- Update incident response procedures for cloud environments
- Establish a cloud governance framework
- Define change management procedures for cloud resources
- Schedule regular cloud architecture reviews
Common Cloud Migration Mistakes to Avoid
Migrating without assessing first
Moving workloads without a thorough assessment leads to unexpected costs, performance issues, and security gaps. Assess before you migrate.
Underestimating egress costs
Data transfer out of the cloud can be expensive. Understand your data flows and model egress costs before committing to a cloud architecture.
Lifting and shifting everything
Not every workload benefits from a simple lift-and-shift. Some applications will perform poorly or incur higher costs in the cloud without re-platforming.
Neglecting security
Cloud security requires active configuration. The default settings on most cloud platforms are not secure enough for enterprise use.
No cost management from day one
Cloud costs are variable and can catch you off guard. Implement cost monitoring and governance from the moment you start consuming cloud services.
Migrating everything at once
A big-bang migration approach is high risk. Phase your migration and validate each wave before proceeding to the next.
How Digital Bloc Manages Cloud Migrations
Digital Bloc delivers end-to-end cloud migration services for Australian enterprises — from initial assessment through to post-migration optimisation and ongoing managed services.
Our migration methodology:
1. Discovery & Assessment — Full audit of your current environment and workload classification
2. Architecture Design — Cloud architecture blueprint aligned to your performance, security, and cost requirements
3. Migration Execution — Phased migration with zero-downtime strategies and full rollback capability
4. Validation & Handover — Comprehensive testing and documentation before handover
5. Ongoing Optimisation — Continuous cost optimisation, security monitoring, and performance management
Learn more about our Cloud Architecture & Migration services → https://thedigitalbloc.com/our-services/cloud-architecture-migration/
Planning a cloud migration? Contact our team https://thedigitalbloc.com/contact-us/ for a no-obligation assessment of your environment and migration readiness.