Shady ASCloud computing has transformed from a competitive advantage into a business necessity. According to Gartner, global cloud spending surpassed $490 billion in 2022, with European enterprises accounting for a rapidly growing share. Yet the path to the cloud is littered with costly mistakes: research shows that up to 70% of cloud migration projects fail or stall, while 83% of data migration projects exceed their budgets and schedules.
The difference between success and failure almost always comes down to strategy. Organizations that approach cloud migration as a purely technical exercise — a simple 'lift and shift' — consistently underestimate the complexity involved. A comprehensive migration strategy addresses not just the technical how, but the business why, the regulatory must, and the financial should. For European businesses operating under GDPR, the stakes are even higher.
The 6 R's of cloud migration: choosing the right approach
AWS originally popularized the 6 R's framework, and it remains the gold standard for evaluating migration paths. Each of the six strategies — Rehost, Replatform, Repurchase, Refactor, Retire, and Retain — serves a different purpose depending on the application's complexity, business value, and long-term roadmap.
Rehosting, often called 'lift and shift,' moves applications to the cloud with minimal changes. It is the fastest path and suits organizations migrating at scale, but it sacrifices cloud-native optimization. Replatforming ('lift, tinker, and shift') introduces targeted optimizations — for example, migrating a SQL Server database to Amazon RDS — without re-architecting the entire application. This balances speed with moderate cost savings.
Refactoring means re-architecting applications using cloud-native services such as serverless functions or managed containers. It is the most expensive upfront but delivers the greatest long-term scalability and cost efficiency. Repurchasing involves switching to a SaaS alternative — moving from an on-premises CRM to Salesforce, for instance. Retiring means decommissioning applications that are no longer needed, while Retaining keeps certain workloads on-premises where migration offers insufficient benefit.
The critical insight is that most organizations will use a combination of these strategies. A thorough portfolio assessment — cataloguing every application, its dependencies, data sensitivity, and business criticality — determines which R applies to which workload. Skipping this assessment is the single most common cause of migration failure.
Cost analysis: beyond the monthly invoice
One of the most persistent myths about cloud migration is that it automatically reduces costs. In reality, 82% of cloud customers cite managing cloud spending as their primary challenge. Without proper cost governance, organizations frequently experience 'cloud bill shock' — monthly invoices that far exceed projections.
A thorough cost analysis must account for direct costs (compute, storage, networking, licensing), indirect costs (training, refactoring labor, consulting fees), and hidden costs (data egress charges, premium support tiers, compliance tooling). It should also quantify the cost of not migrating: aging hardware refreshes, maintenance contracts, physical data center leases, and the opportunity cost of slow deployment cycles.
Tools like the AWS Migration Evaluator, Azure Migrate, and Google Cloud's Migration Center provide automated discovery and cost modeling. However, these tools estimate infrastructure costs only. Organizations must layer in personnel costs, productivity losses during transition, and a contingency buffer of at least 15-20% for unexpected complications. For a mid-sized European business running 50-100 servers, total migration costs typically range from EUR 200,000 to EUR 1.5 million depending on complexity and chosen strategies.
AWS, Azure, and GCP: choosing the right provider for Europe
In 2022, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform together commanded approximately 66% of the European cloud market. In key European markets, AWS leads with roughly 32% market share, followed by Azure at 20-22% and GCP at 10-12%. However, market share alone should not dictate your choice.
AWS offers the broadest service catalog and the most mature European infrastructure, with regions in Ireland, Frankfurt, Paris, Stockholm, Milan, and London. Azure holds a strong advantage for organizations already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem — integrating seamlessly with Microsoft 365, Active Directory, and Dynamics 365. Google Cloud excels in data analytics and machine learning workloads, with BigQuery remaining an industry benchmark for large-scale data processing.
European businesses should also evaluate sovereign cloud options. Providers like OVHcloud (France), Deutsche Telekom's Open Telekom Cloud, and Scaleway position themselves specifically around EU data sovereignty. While they offer smaller service catalogs than the hyperscalers, they eliminate concerns about extraterritorial data access under laws like the US CLOUD Act. A hybrid approach — using a hyperscaler for general workloads and a sovereign provider for sensitive data — is increasingly common among regulated European enterprises.
GDPR and data sovereignty: the European dimension
For European businesses, GDPR compliance is not a cloud migration afterthought — it is a foundational requirement. While the GDPR does not mandate that personal data must physically reside within the EU, it heavily regulates transfers outside the European Economic Area. Any transfer to a third country requires either an adequacy decision by the European Commission, Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs), or Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs).
A critical nuance often overlooked: even when data centers are physically located in the EU, if the cloud provider is headquartered outside the EEA, the provider may still be subject to third-country jurisdiction. The US CLOUD Act, for example, can compel American companies to disclose data regardless of where it is stored. This means that hosting data on AWS's Frankfurt region does not, by itself, guarantee immunity from US government access requests.
Practical steps include conducting a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) before migration, implementing encryption with customer-managed keys, establishing clear data processing agreements with providers, and maintaining detailed records of processing activities. The Belgian Data Protection Authority has issued fines up to EUR 600,000 for GDPR violations, and penalties across the EU can reach EUR 20 million or 4% of global annual turnover.
A step-by-step migration roadmap
Phase 1 — Assessment and Planning (4-8 weeks): Conduct a complete application and infrastructure inventory. Classify workloads by business criticality, data sensitivity, and technical complexity. Assign each application one of the 6 R's. Define success metrics, budget, and timeline. Engage stakeholders from IT, security, compliance, and business units.
Phase 2 — Foundation and Pilot (6-12 weeks): Establish your cloud landing zone with proper networking, identity management, security controls, and governance policies. Migrate 2-3 low-risk, non-critical workloads as a pilot. Use the pilot to validate cost projections, refine processes, and build team confidence and competence.
Phase 3 — Migration Waves (3-12 months): Group remaining applications into migration waves of 5-15 applications each. Execute waves in order of increasing complexity, with each wave applying lessons learned from previous ones. Maintain parallel environments during transition and conduct thorough testing before decommissioning on-premises systems.
Phase 4 — Optimization and Governance (ongoing): Implement cloud cost management tools and practices like reserved instances, auto-scaling, and right-sizing. Establish a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) to maintain standards, share knowledge, and continuously optimize. Review architecture quarterly against evolving cloud services and pricing models. Remember: migration is not a project with an end date — it is the beginning of an ongoing cloud operations discipline.
How Shady AS can help
At Shady AS SRL, based in the heart of Brussels, we have guided dozens of Belgian and European organizations through successful cloud migrations. Our consultants combine deep technical expertise across AWS, Azure, and GCP with a thorough understanding of European regulatory requirements, including GDPR, NIS2, and industry-specific frameworks.
Whether you are planning your first move to the cloud or optimizing an existing multi-cloud environment, our team provides end-to-end support: from initial assessment and strategy definition through execution, optimization, and ongoing managed services. We help you avoid the pitfalls that cause 70% of migrations to fail. Contact us today through our website to schedule a free migration readiness assessment and take the first confident step toward your cloud future.