A Cloud Migration Checklist for SMEs Still Running On-Premise Servers

Most failed cloud migrations aren't failures of the cloud provider — they're failures of sequencing. Moving a monolith and its database at the same time, with no rollback plan, is how a routine migration turns into a multi-day outage.

Before migrating anything, document what's actually running: which services talk to which databases, what the backup story is today, and what your real recovery time objective is. Then migrate in order of lowest risk to highest — stateless services first, stateful services last, database migration as its own carefully rehearsed step.

Once you're in the cloud, the job isn't done. Monitoring, automated backups, and a documented disaster recovery plan are what actually prevent the next outage from becoming a full day of downtime.