Cloud migration is often described as a move from one environment to another. In practice, it is rarely that simple. Cloud migration service providers help enterprises navigate the dependencies, legacy platforms, databases, integration layers, security requirements, compliance constraints, and business processes involved in moving complex workloads to the cloud.
Planning should establish how each workload will move, what changes it needs, and how the enterprise will control execution.
A clear cloud migration strategy helps enterprises determine what to move, when to move it, and whether each workload should be rehosted, replatformed, refactored, rearchitected, or retired.
Choosing a Migration Path for Each Workload
Cloud migration services help enterprises assess, plan, execute, validate, and optimize the movement of applications, data, infrastructure, and workloads to cloud environments. The scope can extend from readiness and dependency assessment through migration execution, validation, modernization, governance, and ongoing optimization.
The ISG Provider Lens® Multi Public Cloud Services 2025 U.S. report, published in December 2025, identifies Hexaware as a Leader in the Consulting and Transformation Services — Midmarket quadrant. Migration is one of the capabilities considered in that broader evaluation, alongside modernization, architecture, governance, and cloud financial management.
ISG’s midmarket observations describe demand for selective application changes and cloud foundations that fit industry requirements. Buyers are also looking for demonstrable improvements in reliability, spending efficiency, and development delivery.
A workload may therefore be:
- Rehosted with limited changes
- Replatformed onto a managed cloud service
- Refactored to improve the application’s code or structure
- Rearchitected through more substantial changes to the application’s design
- Retired where it no longer creates value
The right path depends on the workload, business requirements, technical constraints, and desired outcome.
Why Complex Workloads Make Migration Harder
A single application can depend on multiple databases, middleware components, APIs, authentication services, infrastructure layers, and downstream systems.
At enterprise scale, these dependencies multiply.
Migration programs therefore need to answer questions such as:
- Which workloads should move first?
- What dependencies exist between applications?
- What should be migrated versus modernized?
- How much remediation is required?
- What will migration cost?
- How will downtime be managed?
- How will data integrity be validated?
- How will security and compliance be maintained?
This is why assessment and planning are central to migration.
9 Providers in ISG’s Midmarket Transformation Assessment
The report’s broader transformation quadrant offers a starting point for identifying providers whose capabilities include migration.
ISG assessed 63 companies for the overall study, with 30 qualifying for the Consulting and Transformation Services — Midmarket quadrant. Eight of the 30 were designated Leaders and one a Rising Star.
The following selection covers those eight Leaders and the Rising Star, listed alphabetically. These summaries reflect ISG’s transformation assessment; enterprises should evaluate each provider’s migration experience against their own requirements.
Brillio
ISG identifies Brillio as the quadrant’s Rising Star. Its assessment highlights orchestration that uses AI to coordinate work across a client’s tools, together with investment in industry solutions and offshore delivery capacity.
Coforge
ISG highlights Coforge’s use of industry-specific intellectual property and AI in its cloud services. The report also notes contracts linked to measurable results, open-source delivery tools, and increased collaboration with nearshore teams.
Hexaware
ISG identifies Hexaware as a Leader and highlights its application modernization tools and platform engineering model. The profile describes capabilities for assessing applications, changing code and architecture, and creating reusable cloud environments.
Hitachi Digital Services
ISG notes that Hitachi Digital Services incorporates service-level objectives into its contracts and draws on experience with operational technology across industries. The report also describes a transition toward using AI-supported operational guidance in production environments.
Innova Solutions
ISG describes Innova Solutions as combining engineering services with AI-supported delivery. It is bringing its accelerators into a common approach to transformation while extending partnerships and capabilities across infrastructure environments.
Mphasis
ISG highlights Mphasis’s use of platforms to connect development with operations and its work to standardize reusable designs for cloud changes. The report also notes AI-related improvements in incident costs and broader coverage of U.S. industries.
Persistent Systems
ISG emphasizes Persistent Systems’ cloud engineering capabilities, including reusable configurations that combine cloud foundations with monitoring and financial management. Its assessment also points to investment in industry offerings and local leadership for regulated sectors.
Rackspace Technology
ISG describes Rackspace Technology’s expansion from operating cloud environments into transformation services. The report points to AI-supported assessment and governance, dedicated modernization teams, and integrations with external platforms to help deliver complex enterprise resource planning migrations.
Unisys
ISG highlights Unisys’s consulting approach to preparing clients for AI and its investment in security for multicloud transformation. The assessment also notes broader use of zero trust and modernization work extending beyond public cloud infrastructure.
The Migration Decision Starts with Understanding the Estate
Large application estates rarely have a single migration path.
Some workloads may be ready to move with limited changes. Others may require remediation, replatforming, refactoring, or rearchitecture.
ISG’s eligibility criteria call for application migration expertise supported by automation and reusable delivery resources. For enterprises planning a move, discovery should establish the changes each application needs and the dependencies that affect sequencing.
A structured cloud readiness assessment can help establish:
- Which applications are ready to migrate
- Which require remediation
- Which should be replatformed
- Which should be refactored
- Which may need rearchitecture
- Where dependencies could create risk
- Where migration can create measurable value
This creates a migration roadmap based on the actual estate rather than applying the same strategy to every workload.
Migration Works Better When Execution Is Repeatable
At enterprise scale, migration cannot depend entirely on manual effort.
ISG describes providers making transformation delivery more repeatable through reusable designs, automated implementation processes, and AI support. For migration planning, the practical implication is to ask how a provider will standardize recurring tasks while handling exceptions in the application estate.
Reusable patterns can support assessment, testing, deployment, and governance. The migration plan should also establish how teams will handle workloads that do not fit those patterns.
The benefit becomes particularly important when migration involves large application portfolios with different technologies, dependencies, and levels of technical debt.
The Migration Path Should Match the Workload
Not every workload needs to be treated the same way.
A relatively stable application may be rehosted. Another may benefit from moving to a managed cloud service. Applications with architectural constraints may require refactoring or rearchitecture.
The point is not to modernize everything before migration.
It is to determine how much change each workload actually needs and align the migration path accordingly.
That distinction can help enterprises avoid both unnecessary transformation and the risk of carrying avoidable constraints into the cloud.
Making Complex Migration More Repeatable with Hexaware
Hexaware’s positioning in the ISG report provides an example of how migration and modernization capabilities are increasingly being brought together through more industrialized delivery models.
ISG’s Hexaware profile combines application modernization with a platform engineering model. Together, these capabilities can support both the changes an application needs and the cloud environment it will use.
ISG describes environments that teams can provision themselves, supported by infrastructure as code (IaC), reusable platform designs, and policy controls for central IT oversight.
Applied to migration, these capabilities can help standardize environment setup and governance across workloads.
Migration Across Multiple Cloud Platforms
The destination can add complexity when a multicloud migration involves several hyperscalers and existing on-premises environments.
Enterprises may have workloads across AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and existing on-premises environments. Migration therefore needs to account for interoperability, governance, security, cost, and operational consistency.
The midmarket eligibility criteria require certified delivery capability on at least two hyperscaler platforms. ISG lists AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) as examples, rather than requiring certification on all four.
ISG also highlights Hexaware’s expanding hyperscaler partnerships as part of its modernization approach.
For enterprises with distributed estates, multicloud experience therefore matters not only to the destination but also to how workloads are assessed, sequenced, migrated, and governed.
What Successful Cloud Migration Should Achieve
A successful migration should create more than a new hosting location.
It should help the enterprise:
- Reduce unnecessary infrastructure constraints
- Improve scalability
- Increase deployment flexibility
- Create a foundation for modernization
- Improve cost visibility
- Strengthen resilience
- Prepare applications for cloud-native capabilities
ISG’s midmarket observations emphasize the results clients expect from cloud investment. A migration program should define its own targets for reliability, cost, and development delivery before execution.
Begin Cloud Migration with Hexaware
Hexaware’s cloud migration services bring together assessment, automation, modernization accelerators, platform engineering, hyperscaler capabilities, and industry-specific expertise.
Cloud migration is ultimately a change-management exercise for technology. The destination matters, but so does the path taken to get there.
For enterprises with complex application estates, an assessment-led, automation-driven approach can provide a more controlled path to the cloud while creating a foundation for the modernization and optimization that can follow.
