INTRO

Most cloud migrations fail at the planning stage, not the technical stage. The architecture review takes three months. The business case keeps getting revised. The vendor pushes its preferred landing zone. And the production system that needs migrating keeps accumulating technical debt while everyone deliberates.

Gradion approaches cloud migration differently. We start with an architecture audit of what you actually have, not a generic cloud readiness questionnaire. Within two to four weeks we have a migration path: which workloads move as-is, which get replatformed onto managed services, and which need genuine re-architecting before they can run reliably in a distributed cloud environment. From there, migration proceeds in phases, keeping production stable throughout.

We work across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Ali Cloud, and we are not affiliated with any of them. The right platform for a given workload depends on your existing contracts, your team's skills, your regulatory environment, and the services that genuinely fit the architecture -- not on which hyperscaler has the largest rebate on offer.

WHAT WE DELIVER

Architecture Audit \& Migration Assessment

Before any migration begins, we map the current system: services, dependencies, data flows, compliance constraints, and operational pain points. The output is a migration inventory with a clear recommendation for each workload -- rehost, replatform, re-architect, or retire -- and a sequenced roadmap with realistic effort estimates. No vague "phase one" placeholders.

Rehosting (Lift-and-Shift)

Some workloads are best moved quickly and stabilized in the cloud before optimization begins. We automate the lift using CloudEndure, AWS MGN, Azure Migrate, or equivalent tooling, establish baseline monitoring, and validate that the system behaves identically in the new environment. Speed without chaos.

Replatforming

Moving a workload to the cloud is an opportunity to shed operational overhead without rewriting business logic. We migrate databases to RDS, Aurora, or Cloud SQL; replace self-managed queues with managed services like SQS or Pub/Sub; and shift batch processing to serverless or container-native equivalents. The application code stays close to unchanged. The operational burden drops materially.

Re-architecting \& Cloud-Native Transformation

When the existing architecture cannot scale or cannot be maintained safely, we redesign it for the cloud. That means decomposing monoliths into bounded services, introducing event-driven communication via Kafka or cloud-native messaging, and building for horizontal scale from the start. We do not propose microservices for their own sake. We propose the architecture that the system's load profile and team structure actually warrant.

Containerization \& Kubernetes Migration

We containerize applications, build Helm chart libraries, and migrate workloads onto Kubernetes -- whether that is EKS, AKS, GKE, or self-managed. Namespace design, RBAC, autoscaling configuration, and persistent storage patterns are specified before the first workload lands, not retrofitted when something breaks. Teams get runbooks and on-call documentation, not just a working cluster.

Multi-Cloud \& Hybrid Architecture

Regulatory requirements, data sovereignty rules, and latency constraints often require workloads to span cloud and on-premise environments. We design and operate hybrid setups with consistent networking, unified identity and access management, and a single observability layer -- so the fact that a service runs on Azure in Frankfurt and on-premise in Singapore does not produce two separate operational realities.

Data Migration \& Governance

Moving compute without moving data correctly is a common migration failure mode. We handle schema migration, data validation pipelines, cutover sequencing, and rollback procedures. Regulatory requirements -- GDPR, financial data residency, healthcare compliance -- are mapped to architecture decisions before migration begins, not flagged as blockers halfway through.

China: Gateway for European and DACH companies

Operating in China requires a fundamentally different infrastructure approach. The Great Firewall blocks or severely degrades access to AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud from within mainland China -- meaning a platform hosted in Frankfurt or Singapore will be slow or unreachable for Chinese users without a dedicated China presence. Gradion operates on Alibaba Cloud (Ali Cloud), the dominant infrastructure platform within China, and understands the regulatory requirements that come with it: ICP licensing, data localisation obligations, and the network architecture needed to bridge a China-hosted environment with a global platform.

For European and DACH companies expanding into China -- or Chinese platforms expanding outward -- Gradion provides the infrastructure knowledge and the on-the-ground delivery capability to make it work. This includes Ali Cloud deployment and operations, cross-border network architecture connecting China and international environments, and guidance on the compliance requirements that determine what can and cannot be hosted inside the mainland.

PROOF IN PRODUCTION

A Swiss banking technology provider running more than 300 core banking applications, processing half a million transactions daily across dozens of retail banks, engaged Gradion to design and execute a hybrid migration to Azure and Google Cloud. The constraint: zero tolerance for downtime, zero tolerance for regulatory missteps, and a workforce that had to shift from legacy operational patterns to cloud-native tooling and culture simultaneously.

Gradion conducted a full architecture audit across all 300 applications, defined a regulation-compliant multi-cloud infrastructure, and delivered a sequenced hybrid migration plan -- in 8 weeks. Staff training and Instant Payments enablement were built into the same engagement. The system architecture was prepared for regulatory audit before a single workload moved to production cloud.

HomeToGo, the world's largest vacation rental marketplace, was built cloud-native from day one -- 15 million+ listings, 100+ partner API integrations, 25 countries. Gradion was the engineering partner from founding through to a EUR 1 billion IPO on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, building and operating the infrastructure that sustained 50+ production deployments per day and 99.99% uptime across seven years and 150 engineers at peak.

commercetools processes more than $75 billion in annualized GMV and 500 million orders per year for enterprise retailers globally. Gradion provides the APAC leg of their follow-the-sun cloud operations model -- full operational ownership of the global platform during Vietnam daytime hours, running the same infrastructure the US and Germany teams manage during their shifts. When the platform cannot afford downtime, every leg of the operational model has to hold.

HOW WE DELIVER

Gradion migration engagements run with teams across Germany and Vietnam, operating on a follow-the-sun model. That means an eight-week migration assessment is genuinely eight weeks: no single-timezone bottlenecks, no handoff delays, no waiting until Monday morning to unblock a decision made Friday afternoon in Frankfurt.

A typical migration engagement runs as follows: architecture audit and migration inventory in weeks one and two; migration path sign-off and infrastructure provisioning in weeks three and four; phased workload migration with parallel production validation from week five onward. Security hardening and observability configuration are not a separate workstream -- they are embedded from week one.

TECHNOLOGY

Cloud platforms: AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Ali Cloud

Infrastructure as code: Terraform, Pulumi, AWS CDK

Container orchestration: Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE), Helm, ArgoCD

CI/CD: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins

Observability: Datadog, Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry

Security: HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Snyk

Data migration: AWS DMS, Azure Database Migration Service, custom validation pipelines

CTA

Bring the architecture diagram. We will tell you what moves first and why.