Wave 1: Align Objectives – The Foundation of Cloud Success
In the race to the cloud, many organizations stumble before they even start. Wave 1: Align Objectives – The Foundation of Cloud Success is crucial in avoiding the “Implement to Fail” trap. They fall into this trap, mesmerized by the promise of new technology without a clear understanding of the business value they aim to achieve. According to Gartner, migrations that skip the crucial pre-work of strategy and planning are far more likely to fail, resulting in budget overruns, security vulnerabilities, and a solution that doesn’t meet business needs [1].
Wave 1: Align Objectives is the antidote to this common pitfall. It’s a disciplined, five-step process designed to build a rock-solid business case and a unified vision for your cloud journey. This foundational wave ensures that every subsequent action is tied to a measurable business outcome.
Step 1: Assess Business Drivers & Create the Business Case
Before a single server is provisioned, you must answer the fundamental question: “Why are we doing this?” Is it to increase agility, reduce operational costs, accelerate innovation, or enhance security? The answer is rarely just one of these. This step involves engaging with stakeholders across the business—from finance to marketing to operations—to build a comprehensive Business Case Document.
This isn’t about technology for technology’s sake. It’s about translating technical capabilities into tangible business value. A strong business case becomes your North Star, guiding decisions throughout the migration.
Step 2: Define the Cloud Vision & Strategy
With a clear “why,” you can now define the “what.” The Cloud Strategy Document outlines the high-level vision for your cloud adoption. Will you be cloud-first? Multi-cloud? Hybrid? This document sets the guiding principles for your entire program. It defines the desired end-state and articulates how the cloud will function as an enabler of your broader business strategy.
Step 3: Establish Success Metrics (KPIs)
How will you know if you’ve succeeded? A vision without metrics is just a dream. This step is about defining the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will measure the success of your migration against the business drivers identified in Step 1. A robust KPI Framework should include metrics across several domains:
- Financial: Cloud spend vs. budget, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) reduction.
- Operational: Uptime/availability, deployment frequency, performance improvements.
- Business: Time-to-market for new features, customer satisfaction scores.
Step 4: Analyze the Application Portfolio
Not all applications are created equal, and not all of them belong in the cloud. This step involves a thorough analysis of your existing applications to determine their suitability for migration. The result is a detailed Application Inventory that categorizes applications based on their business value, technical complexity, and interdependencies. This inventory is the primary input for the 5Rs analysis (Rehost, Revise, Rearchitect, Rebuild, Replace) that occurs in Wave 3.
Step 5: Craft Decision Principles
Finally, to ensure consistency and speed in decision-making, Wave 1 concludes with the creation of a Decision Matrix. This framework provides a clear, agreed-upon set of principles for making key choices throughout the migration. It answers questions like:
- How will we select a primary cloud vendor?
- What are our security and compliance non-negotiables?
- How do we prioritize which applications to migrate first?
By the end of Wave 1, you don’t just have a plan; you have a coalition. You have a shared understanding of the value, a clear vision for the future, and a framework for making sound decisions. This alignment is the single most important factor in de-risking your cloud migration and ensuring it delivers lasting value.
References
[1] Gartner, “IT Roadmap for Cloud Migration,” Gartner, Accessed Jan 08, 2026.
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