Modernizing your business with the cloud is essential for lasting success in a competitive, digital world. The promise of speed, agility, and innovation makes cloud adoption a top priority, offering unparalleled opportunities to accelerate time-to-market and drive transformation. But the journey isn’t always smooth. From dealing with outdated systems to managing costs and aligning technology with business goals, cloud modernization comes with its fair share of challenges.
The Importance of Cloud in Modern Business Transformation
According to Gartner, 25% of organizations will experience significant dissatisfaction with their cloud adoption by 2028 due to poor implementation and cost overruns, underscoring the need for strategic modernization. This highlights the growing need for enterprises to not just migrate to the cloud, but to modernize intelligently — aligning technology investments with business outcomes.
Successful cloud modernization requires more than just a move to a new technology stack. It requires a deep understanding of the existing infrastructure, applications, and business needs. It is finding the right approach to streamline cloud adoption while ensuring it aligns with your business strategy and goals. Without a solid cloud modernization strategy, businesses risk delays, inflated costs, and less-than-optimal transformation.
Key Challenges in Cloud Modernization
While the cloud offers immense potential, the path to migration is often fraught with challenges that can derail even the most well-intentioned projects. From unexpected technical hurdles to strategic misalignments, these obstacles can quickly turn a promising transformation into a costly setback. Recognizing and addressing common cloud migration pitfalls is crucial to ensuring a smooth and successful cloud migration journey.
- Legacy application migration: Older applications are designed for on-premises infrastructure and rarely possess the necessary flexibility for cloud adaptation. If done improperly, migration processes are time-consuming, expensive, and error-prone.
- Containerization and refactoring: Certain applications may need to be re-architected or refactored before moving to the cloud, which could add complexity and potentially delay movement.
- Integration complexity: The requirement to integrate on-premises systems with cloud platforms can add an additional layer of complexity, such as when transferring data in real time or when multiple environments are to coexist.
- Cost overruns: Many businesses underestimate the true cost of cloud adoption. Unplanned expenses related to under- or over-provisioning cloud resources can lead to budget overruns.
- Security and compliance: It is crucial to ensure that data is securely migrated and remains compliant with industry regulations during and after the migration process. Any lapse can lead to data breaches or non-compliance penalties.
Lack of a proper cloud modernization strategy aggravates the above-mentioned challenges of cloud adoption. Each of the challenges identified here must be included in the business roadmap for a smooth and swift cloud transition.
Smart Cloud Adoption Strategies for Overcoming Challenges
While the benefits of cloud transformation are undeniable, many enterprises face roadblocks such as integration complexity, cost overruns, skill shortages, and governance issues.
Overcoming these challenges requires more than a modernization or migration plan — it demands a smart, strategic approach that balances agility, security, and business value. By following proven best practices and adopting intelligent cloud strategies, enterprises can accelerate transformation, reduce risks, and achieve measurable outcomes.
Adopt a Cloud-First, Value-Driven Approach
Focus on migrating workloads that deliver the highest business impact first, ensuring cloud adoption aligns with strategic goals rather than being purely technology-led.
Conduct an Application Portfolio Assessment (APA)
Evaluate existing applications to identify which to modernize, rehost, retire, or retain — enabling a structured, cost-efficient, and low-risk modernization roadmap.
Leverage Automation and AI for Speed and Accuracy
Use automation tools, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and AI-driven insights to streamline migration, optimize resources, and minimize human errors.
Strengthen Cloud Governance and FinOps
Establish governance models and FinOps practices to gain visibility into usage, control costs, and ensure compliance across multi-cloud environments.
Modernize with Cloud-Native Architectures
Re-architect applications using microservices, containers, and serverless frameworks to boost scalability, resilience, and innovation agility.
Enable a Cloud Center of Excellence (CoE)
Build a cross-functional CoE to define standards, share best practices, and continuously improve cloud adoption maturity across the organization.
Introducing amaze®: A Platform to Overcome Modernization Challenges
A well-crafted approach, involving technology, automation, and business strategy, will avoid common cloud migration pitfalls. Here’s how Hexaware’s intelligent cloud journey automation platform, Amaze® for Cloud, empowers the key steps to address the challenges of cloud modernization, including:
Cloud Readiness Assessments
This process involves evaluating your current infrastructure, applications, and overall business goals. Cloud readiness assessment will help identify which applications are ready to migrate, which need refactoring, and which might require a complete overhaul.
Hexaware Amaze® is a patented automated application portfolio assessment for analyzing legacy monolithic applications. It provides a detailed readiness report for transforming apps into the cloud and maps a clear path to modernizing legacy applications that align with the cloud strategy.
Automation to Speed Up Transformation
The most effective way to tackle cloud migration challenges is by embracing automation. Automating the migration process reduces the likelihood of human errors, speeds up deployment, and leads to cost savings. Repetitive tasks like code analysis, workload assessment, or even the execution of the migration process can be handled by automated tools.
Amaze® simplifies the entire cloud modernization process by automating key tasks, significantly reducing time-to-market and improving accuracy. Automation allows businesses to migrate thousands of applications in days instead of months, reducing both effort and cost.
Cloud Cost Optimization
Many companies experience unexpected expenses during the transition if they don’t calculate resource usage and over-provisioning in the cloud. If a company doesn’t make appropriate forecasts, it incurs expenses for assets it never needs, and this is detrimental to the return on investment.
Amaze® features a cloud economic toolkit, supporting businesses to base their most feasible cloud strategy on their demands. It supports the optimization of infrastructure usage, efficient management of cloud resources, and avoidance of costly missteps. Selecting the appropriate cloud mode—public, private, or hybrid—enables businesses to control their cloud costs while maintaining flexibility in their operations.
Prioritization of Security and Compliance
Security must never be a last-minute consideration for cloud migration. Businesses have to ensure all data is migrated securely and that their cloud environment satisfies all regulatory and compliance requirements. Otherwise, there is a great chance of facing costly data breaches, fines, and loss of customer trust.
With Amaze®, security is built into the core of the cloud modernization process. The platform ensures that data is encrypted during migration and helps companies implement robust security measures to safeguard against vulnerabilities in the cloud. It also supports compliance with industry standards, ensuring that businesses maintain regulatory adherence during and after the migration.
Accelerating Cloud Modernization with Amaze® for Cloud
The Amaze® for Cloud platform is designed to simplify cloud adoption and address the most common challenges businesses face. Key features of the platform include:
- Cloud economic toolkit: Helps businesses choose the right cloud strategy based on cost-efficiency, business goals, and scalability requirements.
- API-enabled microservices: Allows for comprehensive IT portfolio modernization, enabling businesses to transition to a cloud-native microservices architecture. Supports migration strategies such as Lift and Shift, database modernization, and full cloud migration to adapt to a variety of business requirements.
- Automation of common workloads: Automates enterprise-specific workloads to hasten cloud migration, reduce human intervention, and speed up the entire process.
- Cloud-agnostic solution: Works natively across all public, private, and hybrid cloud models for alignment with enterprise IT goals.
- Comprehensive security features: Ensures that cloud migration is secure, with built-in security protocols to protect data during and after migration.
Benefits of Cloud Modernization with Amaze®
Amaze® is proven to bring substantial business benefits in cloud, app, and data modernization journeys:
- Cost optimization: With automated assessments and migration tasks, Amaze® ensures that businesses avoid unnecessary resource expenditures, making every step of the cloud journey cost-effective.
- Business agility: It allows businesses to scale up, roll out new products, or adapt quickly to market changes. Amaze® enables businesses to innovate and accelerate the application of cloud-native technologies.
- Resilience increase: Businesses with a modernized IT portfolio have more resilient infrastructure, applications, and data due to their greater resilience to market changes or unexpected events.
- Faster innovation: Amaze®-powered cloud environments give organizations the flexibility to innovate, rapidly release new services, and stay ahead of the curve in this marketplace.
Smart Cloud Adoption: The Fastest Way Forward with Hexaware
Cloud modernization is a journey that requires strategic planning, the right tools, Hexaware’s cloud modernization and migration services, and a focus on long-term value. By facing the challenges of cloud migration and embracing automation, businesses can unlock the full potential of the cloud. Our cloud services, underpinned by Amaze® for Cloud, streamline modernization-led migration, making it possible for businesses to innovate faster, optimize costs, and improve agility in the competitive landscape.
