After guiding multiple Texas state agencies through cloud migration initiatives over the past several years, I've learned that successful cloud adoption in government looks very different from private sector migrations. Here are five lessons that matter most—learned through real implementations, not vendor presentations.
The cloud providers will enthusiastically show you hundreds of services and capabilities. But the critical question isn't "what can we do?" but rather "what should we do first?"
What works: Begin with a clear business problem or operational pain point. Maybe it's disaster recovery, maybe it's scaling for peak demand, maybe it's retiring expensive legacy infrastructure. Define success in business terms before choosing cloud services.
Real example: One agency wanted to "move to the cloud" until we asked why. The real need was better disaster recovery for their critical systems. We solved that first with a targeted approach, built confidence, then expanded from there.
In government, technical challenges are often easier to solve than procurement processes. Cloud migrations require navigating:
What works: Build procurement time into your migration timeline from day one. A 6-month technical migration might take 18 months when you factor in the procurement reality. Plan accordingly and set realistic expectations with stakeholders.
Your agency staff will need to operate and maintain these cloud systems long after the migration consultants leave. Skills transfer can't be an afterthought.
What works: Insist on hands-on involvement from your team throughout the migration. Pair agency staff with consultants during implementation. Document everything in plain language. Create runbooks for common operational tasks.
Warning sign: If consultants are doing 100% of the work while your team watches, you're building a dependency, not building capability.
Government cloud migrations require security authorizations (FedRAMP, state equivalents, agency-specific processes). These processes often take longer than the actual technical migration.
What works: Engage your security and compliance teams on day one—not after you've designed the solution. Understand authorization requirements before choosing architectures. Build security checkpoints into your timeline.
Cloud economics work differently than traditional IT budgets. What looks cheaper initially can become expensive over time if you're not careful about:
What works: Implement cost monitoring and governance from the start. Set up billing alerts. Review usage monthly. Right-size resources regularly. Build someone on your team into a "cloud financial analyst" role.
If there's one meta-lesson from all these experiences, it's this: Successful cloud migrations in government require balancing technical capability with organizational reality.
The technology is rarely the hard part. The hard parts are:
This is why fractional CTO support can be so valuable—bringing technical expertise combined with experience navigating these organizational realities.
If you're leading or planning a cloud migration in the public sector, I'd enjoy hearing about your challenges and lessons learned.
This post reflects experiences across multiple Texas state agency cloud migration initiatives over the past several years. Specific details have been generalized to protect client confidentiality.