The Most Common Mistakes When Migrating to The Cloud – How Can We Avoid Them?

Migration to the cloud is a milestone for many companies, as it allows them to improve the flexibility and scalability of solutions that will enable them to adapt resources to current business needs. It also allows you to optimise costs, increase security, and accelerate innovation. However, an incompetent approach to this process can do more harm than good. In practice, many organisations make similar cloud migration mistakes that slow the project, generate additional costs, or put data at risk.

Common cloud migration mistakes

1. Lack of a clear migration strategy

One of the fundamental mistakes of cloud migration is starting without a cohesive strategy. Many companies treat migration as a simple “move” of IT systems from the server room to the cloud environment. Meanwhile, it is a process that requires business, technical and organisational analysis.

Without clearly defined goals, it is easy to lose priorities—instead of optimising costs, you can achieve the opposite effect.

How to avoid this mistake?

• Define your business priorities: cost reduction, scalability, innovation, and security.
• Choose the right cloud model (public, private, hybrid).
• Plan which applications are worth moving and which are better left in the existing IT infrastructure.

2. Migration “at once” instead of in stages

Some organisations choose to move all systems to the cloud at once. Unfortunately, this is a big mistake—the risk of failures, compatibility problems, or interruptions in service availability increases rapidly.

How to avoid this mistake?

• Migrate in stages, starting with less critical systems.
• Test each step before moving on to the next.
• Include a backup plan in case of problems.

3. Neglect of safety aspects

One of the most serious mistakes in cloud migration is not considering security policies at the planning stage. Moving data to the cloud without proper security can leave your business vulnerable to attacks, data leaks, and even reputational damage.

How to avoid this mistake?

• Implement data encryption.
• Take care of access control and password policies.
• Regularly conduct security tests and audits – including GDPR or IT audits and consulting.

4. Failure to take into account system integration

Companies often focus on migration, forgetting that the migrated applications must work seamlessly with existing systems. A lack of integration analysis can lead to interruptions in business processes.

How to avoid the error?

• Conduct a thorough analysis of system dependencies.
• Use integration tools and APIs.
• Test data flows between systems before a full launch.

5. No backups

One of cloud migration’s often overlooked and severe mistakesis the lack of properly planned backups. Many companies mistakenly assume that moving data to the cloud automatically guarantees its complete security. Meanwhile, the responsibility for backup does not always lie with the cloud service provider. The organisation must handle the appropriate data protection mechanisms in many models.

Why is this a mistake?

• System failures, human error, or ransomware attacks can lead to the loss of important information.
• In the absence of a backup, data recovery can be costly and sometimes even impossible.
• Failure to comply with legal and regulatory requirements (e.g. GDPR) regarding data retention can expose the company to heavy fines.

How can this mistake be avoided when migrating to the cloud?

• Create a backup policy tailored to your business needs.
• Use automatic cloud backup mechanisms.
• Test your data recovery regularly to ensure your backup works properly.
• Implement the 3-2-1 rule (three copies of data, on two different media, including one in a different location).

How do you avoid mistakes when migrating to the cloud?

If you want to avoid the above problems, it is worth using the experience of experts. Exorigo Upos, as part of the Exo One Cloud solution, supports organisations at every stage of migration to the cloud—from analysing business needs to designing architecture to secure data movement and maintaining the environment.

Exo One Cloud offers technical support and strategic consulting. Experts help define business goals, choose the exemplary cloud architecture, and develop a step-by-step action plan. This allows the company to avoid mistakes typical of self-implementations, such as underestimating costs, a lack of compliance with regulations, or difficulties in system integration.