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Fred Rodrigues
Fred Rodrigues

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5 Common Mistakes in Cloud Migration Projects — and How to Avoid Them

5 Common Mistakes in Cloud Migration Projects — and How to Avoid Them

Cloud migration is no longer just a trend; it's a critical step for companies seeking scalability, security, and operational efficiency. However, despite the growing maturity of cloud providers and tooling, many migration projects fail or face significant challenges due to avoidable mistakes. With over 16 years of experience in IT infrastructure and leadership in cloud projects, I’ve compiled the five most common mistakes I see in cloud migrations — and how you can avoid them.

1. Underestimating the Planning Phase

One of the most frequent mistakes is starting a migration without a detailed plan. Many companies rush into the cloud motivated by cost reduction or market pressure but overlook the complexity involved.

How to Avoid:

  • Perform a complete assessment of the current infrastructure.
  • Clearly define the objectives of the migration: performance, cost, scalability?
  • Map dependencies between systems and workloads.

In a project I led, careful mapping reduced the initial migration timeline by 30% and prevented critical downtime in the company’s financial system.

2. Ignoring Security from the Start

Security cannot be an afterthought. Many companies migrate sensitive data without first ensuring encryption, access control, and visibility.

How to Avoid:

  • Apply Zero Trust principles.
  • Implement encryption both at rest and in transit.
  • Use monitoring and auditing tools from day one.

3. Choosing the Wrong Cloud Model

Not every workload benefits from public cloud. In some cases, a hybrid or multi-cloud model is more appropriate.

How to Avoid:

  • Critically assess latency, compliance, and integration requirements.
  • Don’t adopt a “one-size-fits-all” approach.
  • Consider workloads that should remain on-premises or in private cloud.

4. Lack of Automation

Migrating manually can be a disaster. Besides being error-prone, it's inefficient.

How to Avoid:

  • Use Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform or CloudFormation.
  • Automate environment provisioning, CI/CD pipelines, and testing.

In one of the most complex projects I coordinated, automation reduced environment provisioning time from 5 days to less than 2 hours.

5. Not Considering Post-Migration Governance and Costs

Many companies forget that after migration, it’s essential to maintain active governance over resources, or costs will spiral out of control.

How to Avoid:

  • Create tagging policies and resource organization practices.
  • Implement real-time cost alerts and budget analysis.
  • Conduct periodic usage reviews and optimize continuously.

Migrating to the cloud can transform an organization’s infrastructure for the better, but only if done with technical and strategic responsibility. I hope these tips, based on real-world experiences, help guide your cloud migrations toward being safer, more efficient, and sustainable.

About the Author

I am Fred Alencar Rodrigues Fonseca, a cloud infrastructure specialist with over 16 years of experience in IT and a degree in Information Systems. Throughout my career, I have led strategic cloud and infrastructure projects for large organizations, focusing on hybrid and multi-cloud environments, automation, and secure migrations. My work has contributed to building high-availability architectures and nationally scaled systems in Brazil.

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