You're planning a cloud migration. But here's a question: are you packing everything, or cleaning house first? 

Think about the way you’d approach moving homes. You sort through your belongings, pack what still works for you and discard what doesn’t. A move to the cloud works similarly. It’s your opportunity to clean up your IT environment. 

When moving homes, most people toss out some unwanted belongings. Packing forces you to confront what you actually need. IT migrations work the same way: organizations discover unused resources and applications, overlapping security tools and processes that have been evolving and running on autopilot for years.

A significant amount of your cloud infrastructure is likely primed for retirement or consolidation, but most organizations simply move everything to the cloud and wonder why their bills are higher.  Instead, the most successful organizations use migration as an opportunity for cleaning and modernization.  

What’s in your IT attic? 

When tidying up for the move, it’s easy to forget the junk tucked away in your attic or basement. However, clearing it out can prevent issues like pest problems detected during your buyer’s inspection or the loss of value from missed family heirlooms.

Your cloud environment? Same deal. IT “mess” represents potential issues and lost opportunities. A thorough assessment of your hybrid cloud environment enables you to address or benefit from them by identifying items that have been overlooked in your IT attic. 

• Ghost applications: Software no one remembers commissioning or forgets still exists, systems with zero logins and "just in case" maintenance  
• Security debt: Unpatched systems, outdated authentication and compliance gaps  
• Data hoarding: Backups of backups, archives predating retention policies, and unallocated storage 
• License graveyard: Unused licenses, maintenance for sunset products and overlapping tools  

Idle virtual machines left running outside business hours, and overprovisioned instances sized for worst-case scenarios are among the most common issues. We also regularly detect orphaned storage volumes, snapshots, and unused SaaS licenses, as well as redundant services, in clients’ environments. 

The security and operations forcing function  

As you move furniture and boxes out, you gradually reveal what they’ve concealed – chipped paint behind a wardrobe, holes from artwork, the broken backdoor lock you always meant to fix.

During a cloud migration, security and operational issues often emerge as potential roadblocks. But they also serve as opportunities for long-term success if you focus on these building blocks: For instance, a cloud AI solution can protect your data while boosting your governance. 

Manual processes won’t scale. Relying on manual processes for managing your cloud infrastructure will likely lead to obstacles at cloud scale. To counter the cloud complexity and accelerate outcomes, automating migration and management processes becomes necessary. So is a clear view into your infrastructure. This shifts your IT team's dynamics from "keeping lights on" to initiatives that make it easier to achieve business outcomes, providing you with the cost visibility to reveal true application economics.

Security vulnerabilities surface. On-premises "security through obscurity" is ineffective for cloud migrations, and manual security processes are a stumbling block because of their effort and lack of scalability. AI-driven attacks require AI-driven defense to overcome risk. Migration also requires alignment with frameworks such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology for data protection. 

Watch for these common security gaps when considering cloud migration: 

• Unpatched legacy systems, including outdated OS and apps with known vulnerabilities. 
• Identity access management (IAM) gaps, including overly permissive roles, missing multifactor authentication and hardcoded credentials. 
• Data exposure of public storage and unencrypted transfers 
• Compliance blind spots, such as missing audit trails and data residency controls 
• Operational weaknesses, including fragile manual processes and insecure backups 
• Hidden technical debt such as vulnerable code and misconfigured infrastructure-as-code templates. 

How to clean house with purpose 

Here's the good news: you're already packing boxes. Make sure you're only moving what deserves the trip. 

When moving homes, you probably label each box to stay organized. You may even create spreadsheets to document all moving tasks, from obtaining quotes from professional movers to contacting utility companies to set up or transfer your service and notifying contacts about your new address.

Cloud migration demands the same strategic thinking. Start with a comprehensive application portfolio assessment to evaluate each application’s business value, technical health, compliance and risk, and cost economics. You can map to one of the 6R strategies: Retire, Retain, Rehost, Replatform, Refactor or Rearchitect. Prioritize based on security and business criticality. 

• Rehost (lift-and-shift): Move applications to the cloud as-is without significant changes. This option is fast and low-risk but doesn’t leverage cloud-native benefits. 
• Replatform (lift-tinker-and-shift): Make minor optimizations (e.g., moving to managed services) without altering core architecture. Improves efficiency with minimal effort. 
• Refactor (re-architect): Redesign or modify code to fully exploit cloud-native features like microservices, autoscaling, and serverless. 
• Repurchase: Switch to a different product, often a SaaS solution, replacing the existing application entirely. 
• Retire: Decommission applications that are redundant or no longer needed after migration. 
• Retain: Keep certain applications on-premises due to compliance, cost or technical constraints. 

The cost of skipping cleanup 

Failing to clean up your IT environment before a cloud migration can result in inefficient architectures that are more costly.  In addition, security exposure increases in the cloud, and technical debt compounds, making it harder to fix later. Don’t let "we just migrated" become an excuse to delay process improvement.

Implementing AI tools can streamline cloud migration by enhancing the user experience, strengthening governance, modernizing data processes and benefitting other crucial tasks. 

Make your move to the cloud count 

Ready for cloud migration but want expert guidance? Unisys employs a phased migration methodology that combines a migration factory model with discovery and assessment, utilizing advanced tooling to map dependencies and assess readiness before execution. This model involves repeatable, automated processes organized into waves, squads and sprints for speed. We prioritize agility through continuous stakeholder engagement and iterative testing, enabling us to adapt rapidly without compromising quality. 

To get started, take these steps: 

• Start an honest inventory of your organization’s applications and workloads  
• Identify the business owners for each application (or discover that an application lacks one) 
• Build a business case showing decommissioning savings  
• Prioritize ruthlessly with clear decision criteria  

You're packing boxes anyway. Make sure you're only moving what deserves the trip.