PilotPlan

Representative example, not a customer case study

Medium businessCloud platform selection

Representative cloud migration plan for a Microsoft-heavy application estate

An illustrative cloud decision and migration plan showing how PilotPlan can compare platforms without treating a cloud preference as proof of fit.

Scenario

Illustrative company: a 300-person services business running twelve .NET applications on VMware, Microsoft identity and collaboration tools, a small platform team, and a nine-month datacenter exit target.

Illustrative assumptions

  • Workloads have not yet been dependency-mapped or benchmarked.
  • The organization needs stronger governance and disaster recovery, not just hosting relocation.
  • Some workloads may be retired or replaced instead of migrated.
  • Regulatory requirements and data residency still need confirmation.

Decision risks

  • Datacenter deadline forces lift-and-shift without modernization choices
  • Unknown dependencies break migration waves
  • Cloud cost estimates lack usage baselines
  • Operations and security ownership remain unclear

Options and validation work

Microsoft Azure

Possible fit: Natural first hypothesis because of identity, .NET, and existing Microsoft operations, but workload economics still require measurement.

Validate: Landing zone, licensing benefits, network design, platform skills, service fit, recovery, and cost.

Amazon Web Services

Possible fit: Broad migration tooling and a mature adoption framework make it a credible alternative.

Validate: Team skill ramp, identity integration, migration approach, operating model, and workload-level economics.

Google Cloud

Possible fit: Credible when data, analytics, cloud-native modernization, or specific managed services drive value.

Validate: Workload compatibility, skills, migration tooling, governance, support, and total operating impact.

Illustrative direction

Illustrative direction only: assess and classify every workload before choosing a single-cloud default. Pilot one representative application and validate cost, latency, recovery, security, deployment, and operational workload before scaling migration waves.

Implementation workstreams

  1. 01Application inventory and dependency discovery
  2. 02Cloud adoption strategy and operating model
  3. 03Identity, network, security, and landing zone
  4. 04Workload disposition and migration waves
  5. 05Pilot with measurable exit criteria
  6. 06Cutover, rollback, operations, and cost governance

Official sources used in this example

Capabilities, prices, and terms can change. Confirm the current vendor page and obtain a binding quote before a decision.

Questions about this example

Does a Microsoft estate automatically mean Azure is the right cloud?

No. Existing identity, licensing, skills, and application patterns make Azure a strong hypothesis, but workload economics, managed-service fit, resilience, and operating capability still need evidence.

Should all twelve applications move to one cloud?

Not automatically. Each workload should be classified for retirement, replacement, retention, rehosting, replatforming, or refactoring before a migration wave is approved.

How should cloud migration cost be estimated?

Use measured utilization, storage, network traffic, licensing, support, platform services, migration labor, parallel running, and operating-team changes. List-price calculators alone are not enough.

What should the pilot prove?

The pilot should prove deployment, identity, networking, monitoring, recovery, security, performance, support ownership, and actual cost for a representative workload.

Build a plan around your actual requirements

Describe the challenge, constraints, current stack, budget, and timeline. PilotPlan researches the options and assembles a sourced implementation plan.

Start a plan