Your business is growing rapidly due to a surge in demand for your product or service. That’s great news—until your existing hardware can no longer keep up. Scaling up brings not just more customers, but also greater data demands and increased infrastructure requirements. Suddenly, your team is facing performance bottlenecks, delays, and mounting pressure to adapt quickly.
Now, the conversation shifts: Should your team move to the cloud?
A cloud-first strategy reflects a forward-thinking approach, where businesses prioritize moving their infrastructure and operations to cloud computing platforms before considering traditional alternatives. This mindset is rooted in agility, scalability, and long-term cost efficiency.
According to a Gartner research in 2019, cloud application services (SaaS) were projected to grow from $80 billion in 2018 to $143.7 billion, while cloud system infrastructure services were expected to rise from $30.5 billion to $76.6 billion by 2022—underscoring the accelerating shift toward cloud adoption across industries.
Cloud Migration: What to Expect?
Before thinking of migrating to cloud platforms, you need to know your business objective first. Start by assessing the current state of your IT operations: What are your technical requirements? What challenges are you trying to solve? And importantly, what type of cloud model—public, private, hybrid, or multi-cloud—best aligns with your goals? A well-defined migration strategy helps your team identify both opportunities and potential risks, guiding your operational decisions with clarity and purpose.
Another critical factor is the financial cost of cloud migration. Shifting from on-premises infrastructure to a cloud-first strategy isn’t just about moving systems and applications—it also involves budgeting for bandwidth, skilled personnel, and the expertise needed to execute a seamless migration. Moreover, it requires implementing risk mitigation measures, optimizing performance, and investing in training to ensure teams can effectively adapt to the new environment.
SAP on Cloud
SAP started transitioning its ERP software strategy toward the cloud in 2010, culminating in the release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud in 2016. Since then, SAP has actively encouraged customers to transition from on-premise environments to cloud-based landscapes.
However, despite the growing push for cloud adoption, the reality is that cloud migration—especially for mission-critical applications like SAP—is complex. The shortage of skilled cloud experts and the technical challenges involved make it clear that a successful transition requires careful planning and the right support.
When not executed properly, migrating SAP to the cloud can lead to disruptions and long-term financial consequences. That’s why organizations need to explore reliable migration strategies and partners that can support their cloud-first goals while minimizing risk and downtime.
How to Develop a Cloud First Strategy
As your organization commits to evaluating cloud-based solutions before considering traditional alternatives, it’s critical to first identify the key drivers behind this strategic shift. According to TechTarget’s survey on top drivers of digital transformation, organizations are primarily moving to the cloud to:
- Streamline operations, allow internal efficiency and process management (47%)
- Improve employee performance and productivity (47%), and
- Enhance customer experience and brand loyalty (43%).
Beyond these, cloud migration also opens new opportunities for data-driven insights, including predictive maintenance of high-value assets—helping reduce downtime and avoid costly repairs.
So, how can your organization effectively develop and implement a cloud-first strategy across all departments?
1. Agree on the Definition of Terms
In any business strategy, miscommunication is one of the most common roadblocks—and cloud-first initiatives are no exception. To ensure alignment, all stakeholders must agree on the terminology used throughout the planning and implementation process.
There’s no need to reinvent terms; instead, focus on establishing a shared understanding of key concepts—from cloud models and service levels to migration phases and automation tools. A universal definition of terms promotes clarity, prevents confusion, and keeps your cloud conversations productive and consistent across teams.
2. Identify your Business Goals, Objectives, and Migration Phases
Using a SWOT analysis is a valuable way to validate the potential benefits, opportunities, and risks associated with your cloud migration plan. While each organization will take a unique approach, identifying the various phases of your cloud-first strategy is essential. This structured planning not only clarifies the direction of the migration but also helps determine how each department within the organization will adapt and contribute to the transition.
3. Discuss the Principles to Implement in the Strategy
Brainstorming and planning the steps to implement your cloud-first strategy is essential. By following key guiding principles during implementation, you can avoid costly missteps and reduce complexity. Evaluate the relevance and business impact of each potential cloud service, assess your team’s level of expertise, and carefully manage the effort required to migrate infrastructure to the cloud. Don’t overlook critical factors such as platform compatibility and the role of automation—both of which can significantly influence the success and efficiency of your cloud transition.
4. Align your Financial Consideration with Various Pricing Models
As you shift your business strategy from on-premise infrastructure to SAP on the Cloud, it’s essential to understand the available cloud pricing models and choose the one that aligns with your requirements. Cloud migration can either reduce or increase costs, depending on how well these factors are planned and aligned in advance. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) will ultimately depend on how you balance performance, resiliency, security, and the level of automation you adopt.
For example, if your workload is predictable and stable, you can significantly reduce costs by purchasing reserved instances or committed-use discounts. On the other hand, for more variable or less-defined workloads, a high degree of automation can help optimize resources, such as auto-scaling during peak times and snoozing non-production environments during nights and weekends, to minimize unnecessary expenses.
Learn more about how you can automate snoozing in SAP systems.
5. Enhance Data Security
During cloud migration, both private and public data must be handled appropriately, either by internal teams or trusted external experts. Early in the planning and brainstorming phase, it’s critical to define strategies that ensure your data remains secure throughout the transition. These strategies should align with your staffing requirements, data center policies, and architecture decisions to create a streamlined and secure migration process.
In most public cloud deployments, security is governed by a shared responsibility model. This means the cloud provider is responsible for securing the underlying infrastructure (the cloud itself), while the customer is responsible for securing what’s deployed in the cloud, such as applications, operating systems, databases, storage configurations, and network design. Understanding and clearly defining these responsibilities is vital to minimizing risks and ensuring a successful and secure cloud migration.
Ready to Migrate?
Now that you’ve defined your migration plan and are ready to shift from on-premise to a cloud-first strategy, the next question is: Should you perform the migration manually or automate the process? Will automation save costs, or will it require a larger upfront investment?
Every migration project requires a certain level of technical expertise. The challenge for many businesses lies in whether to rely on skilled professionals, train internal staff, or invest in new tools and technologies. In today’s digital landscape, automation has become a clear advantage—especially for organizations still relying heavily on manual processes. Automating repetitive tasks not only speeds up the migration process but also reduces the risk of human error and frees up teams to focus on higher-value work.
That’s where IT-Conductor comes in. With over a decade of experience in IT automation, IT-Conductor provides an agentless, remote solution for automating on-premise to cloud migrations. Our platform simplifies the process, reduces manual workload, and supports a smoother, more successful implementation of your cloud-first strategy.
Figure 1: IT-Conductor's 5D's Strategy for Cloud Migration
By 2022, the majority of organizations had already shifted to the cloud, contributing to an estimated $70–$140 billion in revenue through cloud application services (SaaS) and cloud system infrastructure services (IaaS). As the demand to streamline operations, enhance performance, and boost productivity continues to rise, adopting a cloud-first strategy has become less of a choice and more of a necessity.
Given this shift, organizations must understand what to expect and how to execute a successful migration—particularly when considering the financial investment and its impact on long-term revenue and operational efficiency.
