Cloud Migration Cost Estimate
This is a practical guide to building a cost estimate for a cloud migration project — a forecast of the money required to complete the work, adapted to the realities of moving systems and data from on-premise infrastructure to the cloud.
What a Cost Estimate is
A cost estimate is a forecast of the money required to complete the work. For the full concept and how it works in general, see Cost Estimation. On a cloud migration project it plays the same role, tuned to this kind of work.
Why it matters for a Cloud Migration project
Cloud Migration projects live or die on moving systems and data from on-premise infrastructure to the cloud. A well-built cost estimate gives the team a shared, explicit reference for exactly that — reducing ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and making problems visible early enough to act. Skipping it, or doing it generically, is how cloud migration projects drift into avoidable delay and cost.
What to include
- Labour costs
- Material/equipment costs
- Indirect costs
- Contingency
- Estimate basis and assumptions
Cloud Migration-specific considerations
Tailor the cost estimate to the risks that most often derail cloud migration projects:
- Underestimated dependencies
- Downtime and data-loss risk
- Runaway cloud costs post-migration
Example
On a real cloud migration project, the cost estimate would be shaped by moving systems and data from on-premise infrastructure to the cloud. In particular, it should explicitly account for the project’s biggest risks — underestimated dependencies, downtime and data-loss risk, runaway cloud costs post-migration — rather than treating them as afterthoughts.