There’s a reason more ado is made about the benefits of operating in the cloud than on moving to the cloud. It’s rarely easy to do and prone to be botched. But what are you going to do? Competing in the current marketplace, let alone surviving a worldwide inflation storm, requires full digitalization and a seriously strategic cloud play.

Considering there’s little choice in the matter, the focus must be on how to make -- or finish -- your company’s move to the cloud as smooth and as painless as possible. After all, few companies can tolerate project delays and broken processes for very long in this economy.

Start by taking note of what’s driving you to move any given element of your business to the cloud. That bit of clarity will sort out a lot of potential issues from the outset.

“It's OK to have multiple drivers, but the primary goal must be clear. A big chunk of the pain related to cloud migration comes from lack of alignment on what's driving the migration,” says Daniel Viveiros, chief technology officer at CI&T, a digital transformation company.

Viveiros offered an example: When decommissioning a data center to cut costs or to improve business continuity, “your main strategy may be to re-host the existing application (lift and shift).” But if growing the top line via app modernization and new cloud-native architectures is the main driver, then “you'll need to re-architect or even replace your legacy systems for SaaS products.”

Click through for more tips on making cloud migration less of a misery.