In this new AI era, businesses operating within the closed architectures of legacy systems do not have the flexible, data-driven foundation to drive innovation and business growth. As AI continues to evolve, those unable to adapt, risk being left behind in keeping pace with the evolving technology and innovation landscape. Without the right cloud migration approach, businesses face the end of innovation.

Cloud migrations are the foundation for modernising and driving long-term business growth. When organisations migrate to a cloud-based environment, it’s crucial to focus on the tangible business value a migration will deliver rather than simply shifting from one system to another. Moving a company’s customer-facing applications and all of its data to a cloud-based environment has benefits that are increasingly real and measurable.

Choose the migration approach that fits your organization’s needs
There are two approaches to cloud migration, broadly speaking: horizontal and vertical, each with its benefits and potential challenges. A vertical approach sees organisations migrating applications one by one: this approach is a good choice if certain systems have to be prioritised, or if the applications being migrated do not have many interdependencies. Vertical migration allows for focused efforts and risk management on individual systems and requires fewer resources. Horizontal migration moves entire system layers at the same time. This is the best solution when businesses have tight deadlines to retire legacy systems, or if their systems are tightly integrated. Horizontal migrations tend to be faster by allowing for parallel work streams, but they require more technical expertise. Organisations often adopt a mixture of the two approaches, for example, horizontally migrating important systems such as data platforms, while taking a vertical approach to customer-facing applications. Whatever approach an organisation takes, it’s vital that the migration also includes a culture shift, preparing employees to adapt to new, consumption-based models and the possibilities of the new technology. Migration is also just the start of the journey, unlocking the potential of AI-driven use cases and seamless data collaboration, including new ways to achieve business value. Change management becomes critical for large-scale migrations, as does the function of people, processes, and culture. A data-first approach will reap benefits

A data-first approach is essential when migrating to the cloud. For those acting as catalysts for change, whether IT managers or CIOs, data must be at the forefront of their minds before planning any successful migration. It is imperative to understand how data is used within organisations, including its structure, governance needs, and how it delivers value and business outcomes. This applies doubly to large, complex systems with many interconnected applications.

Before migrating, businesses must comprehensively assess their current ecosystem. It’s imperative that the end-to-end business product survives the migration, intact. Organisations must maintain internal control over core competencies around data, such as business process knowledge, data governance, and change management. These areas include institutional knowledge that external parties may not grasp. Businesses should also maintain direct oversight over compliance requirements and risk management.

The right partnership is key to success
It is important to bring external expertise to focus on technical activities such as cloud infrastructure optimisation, performance testing, and specialised migration tooling. Enterprises can also leverage code conversion and benefit from purpose-built tools that use technologies including AI. While doing so, those steering the migration need to ensure clear governance around outsourced activities, including regular knowledge transfer sessions.

Partnering with different parts of the business is essential as they all have a role to play: IT and engineering lead on technical implementation, handling the technical side of business requirements, while finance will identify ROI opportunities and manage cloud costs. It helps to create a cross-functional steering committee with representation from every department to ensure that different business areas are aligned and ready to address challenges.

Drive business resilience with adaptability and flexibility
Migration is never one-size-fits-all, and business leaders should be prepared to be flexible and adapt. There are multiple kinds of horizontal migration, from a simple ‘lift and shift’ focused on moving systems as they are to a ‘move and improve’ where migration is followed by optimisation to reduce technical debt. They should be ready to adapt at their own pace, choosing data platforms that offer agnostic architecture and the freedom to choose between data models and tools to ensure minimal disruption.

Flexibility is also important when choosing the tools used for migrations. Flexible data platforms will offer the support businesses need to deal with collaboration and governance frameworks. With India’s varying policies across sectors, enterprises must pay close attention to issues around data quality, security, and compliance, particularly regarding data sovereignty and residency.

Take a shared destiny approach for security
The shift to the cloud fundamentally changes security. The traditional cloud ‘shared responsibility’ model clearly demarcated duties between the provider and the customer. However, a more advanced approach is emerging: the ‘shared destiny’ model. This model recognizes that in the event of a breach, reputational damage affects both parties. This shared risk incentivizes the cloud provider to be a more proactive partner, actively helping customers strengthen their security posture rather than simply managing their own side of the demarcation line.

As ‘destinies’ intertwine, you help eliminate the vulnerability created by password simplicity. Put simply, in a ‘shared destiny’ model, the cloud provider is only responsible for securing infrastructure, while the customer remains responsible for securing data and apps in the cloud, as well as for configuration. In a ‘shared destiny’ model, the cloud provider is more proactive in ensuring their customers have the best security posture.

Taking a ‘shared destiny’ approach allows businesses to be more proactive in securing data, using multi-factor authentication, secure programmatic access, and more comprehensive cloud monitoring services. Choosing a modern, AI-driven data platform offers the best security foundations here, offering security controls across cloud service providers and the entire data ecosystem.

Paving the way for growth
In today’s world, the bigger risk is standing still. Nothing changes if nothing changes.

If organisations are holding back on innovation due to technological limitation, then the time to migrate is clear. There is no need to face an end to possibilities when the path towards success lies in reach. Migrating offers an opportunity to bring businesses up to date with modern requirements and pave the way for adopting technologies such as AI.

However, as we’ve seen, it’s not just a case of plug and play. Organisations must ensure a flexible, data-driven approach to migration. To deliver this, the right choice of a modern, flexible data platform will ensure the whole organisation can work together effectively and pave the way for future innovation and growth.
The author is Fawad Qureshi, Global Field CTO, Snowflake.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETCIO does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETCIO shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organization directly or indirectly.

Published On Aug 1, 2025 at 09:13 AM IST

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