Published: Jun 19, 2025

Cloud migration: balancing modernisation with cost, complexity and stability

When your legacy software is the foundation of your business, how do you balance the need to modernise with the cost, complexity and potential disruption of migration?

With so many organisations using cloud-based software platforms like Google Cloud, staying tethered to your legacy on-premise infrastructure can put you at risk of falling behind. 
Modernising and moving to the cloud offer a range of benefits for businesses, including:

• Agility to respond to market changes in days instead of months
• Scalability to meet seasonal or business fluctuations quickly
• Opportunities to use the latest AI tools to improve efficiencies, analyse data and find new avenues for growth
• Reduced ongoing infrastructure costs and overheads
• Increased peace of mind that your systems and customer data are protected and secure.

The idea of moving all your organisational data and processes to a completely new platform can seem daunting. But with the right partner and a clear step-by-step process, your business can get all the benefits of cloud migration with minimal risk and complexity.
 

Migration minus the disruption

Successful cloud migration requires new ways of thinking and different types of architecture. A tailored migration strategy – and a leading platform like Google Cloud – can help you break free of your legacy software quickly, with minimal impact on day-to-day business processes.
Business disruption is a common concern for organisations looking to migrate to the cloud. If your systems are down even for a short time, this can have a huge impact on your staff and customers. And switching to a new platform comes with the need to learn new technology, which can also slow your business down while staff adapt.
But with technology like Google’s VMware engine you can move all your most important business applications directly into a cloud environment without any downtime. And you can keep the same basic functionality so your employees can hit the ground running with minimal disruption.
 

Streamline, secure and save costs

Once you’ve made the move to your new cloud environment, you can evaluate the less important applications and decide whether you want to change or adapt them to make them more streamlined and cost-efficient. With Google Cloud you can take advantage of its robust infrastructure and security features. And once you’re in the cloud, you’ll also have access to new technologies and tools like AI that can help you improve processes and streamline your customer journey.
To continue to get the most from your cloud migration, keep in mind you’ll need to optimise even after the move is over. The right cloud partner can work with you to review your applications on a regular basis, looking at things like performance and security. They can also help you get the most from your cloud environment by making use of the latest releases and new tools and features.
 

How cloud migration transformed AAP

We recently partnered with Australian Associated Press (AAP) for their cloud migration. AAP has been a main source of news for the Australian public for over 90 years. With a fully on-premise environment and an expensive data centre, AAP knew it was time to modernise. And as their data centre was up for renewal in two months they had to do it quickly.  
AAP chose Google Cloud as it offers one of the best data warehousing services in the world. Using VMware, we moved all their on-premise environments directly to Google Cloud with no downtime. This let them get out of the data centre extremely quickly and removed that significant cost to their business.
Moving to the cloud also gave the organisation greater agility as journalists and photographers from all over the world could upload photos and articles to their cloud platform in real time – especially important when reporting on live events like the Paris Olympics. 
By choosing Google Cloud, AAP also gained access to Google’s AI platform which allows them to immediately assess photos for metadata and automate tags. This saves a lot of time for photographers and helps their fact checking teams when reviewing documents to see whether or not an image has been doctored or includes misinformation.
 

Stability vs. modernisation – you don’t have to choose

Modernisation doesn’t have to be a balancing act between business growth and disruption. With the right platform and partner, cloud migration can be made faster, simpler and save your business costs – especially on hardware and infrastructure. And modernisation gives your business the long-term benefits of greater agility, scalability and easy access to the most up to date AI features and tools.