The long road to migrate IT infrastructure is still being travelled as complex businesses balance security concerns, legacy IT challenges and licensing costs with the need to innovate fast.
There is no doubt IT leaders have a much more sophisticated understanding of cloud. But the question is what are the key challenges facing technology teams as they seek to mature their cloud strategy and leverage AI.
Cloud undoubtedly remains key to digital success. According to Gartner, all cloud segments will record double-digit growth this year.1
However, this strong performance is by no means a signal that businesses are nearing the end of their cloud journeys. Research from Flexera found that businesses continue to struggle with three main challenges: managing cloud spend (84%), cybersecurity (77%), and software licenses (75%).2
Smoothing the way to the cloud
According to James Bland, Director of Technology Solutions at EPAM, businesses struggle with cloud migration for several main reasons. He says: “Discovery is often rushed and underestimates the complexity of integrated application environments.
“Businesses can also fall into the ‘all-or-nothing’ trap, thinking that they must migrate everything to the cloud when hybrid models are in most cases preferable. Additionally, while efforts to reduce consultant costs continue, the internal workload on customer teams is frequently overlooked, leading to hidden costs and burnout.”
Cloud migrations are complex programs, and working with experienced partners like EPAM can prevent expensive errors. Businesses can further reduce complexity by holding fire on application modernization until a later date, focusing only on modernizing high-impact, core applications during the initial migration phase.
Meanwhile, organizations can reduce the cost burden by leveraging cloud vendor funding, especially when working through migration partners. AWS, for example, offers enhanced support that can often offset the entire cost of a migration program.
Easing cloud migrations with AI
Increasingly, AI is playing an important role in cloud migration with tools that understand business context, reduce the customer burden, and which are universally applicable.
With autonomous, context-aware decision-making, AI tools can provide second opinions to human technologists, enhancing their confidence in the migration process without adding cost. Meanwhile, multi-agent systems specialized in tasks like discovery, planning, migration, testing, and documentation eliminate oversights caused by human error.
EPAM’s AI/RunTM platform, which integrates with AWS, exemplifies this shift: Discovery agents consolidate diverse data sources, planning agents recommend strategies, and specialized agents automate code conversion, testing, and documentation. According to Bland, the solution has driven 15–35% task acceleration and ~40% automation in early phases. The strength of this approach is that it pairs AI recommendations with expert human oversight, reducing the burden on the IT team and their migration partners.
EPAM can also help businesses make use of the advanced AI services available on AWS, helping to reduce time-to-value.
“Through AWS, customers gain immediate access to advanced AI services for rapid value creation,” he says. “Working together, EPAM and AWS enable predictive migration planning, real-time operations on trusted flows, and provide a clear link between migration choices and measurable business results, ensuring transformations deliver real impact.”
So, what exactly does a successful cloud strategy look like in 2025? It’s one that blends intentional design, disciplined cost control, targeted innovation, is hybrid by design and centered on an AI-first roadmap. Continuous optimization is a core discipline, and modernization is business-aligned.
Bland concludes: “Successful migrations are measured not just in uptime, but in faster time-to-market, reduced operational overhead, stronger security through cloud-native tools, and teams freed from routine maintenance to focus on innovation. In short, a mature strategy is intentional, cost-aware, AI-enabled, and relentlessly focused on value.”
2 Flexera, “State of the Cloud Report,” 2025