Azure Cloud Adoption Framework: Roadmap Tips

The Azure Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) provides a structured approach to planning, migrating, and managing your transition to Microsoft Azure. It focuses on aligning cloud initiatives with business goals, reducing risks, and optimizing costs. The framework is divided into seven methodologies: Strategy, Plan, Ready, Adopt, Govern, Secure, and Manage, guiding organizations through every stage of cloud adoption.

Key takeaways:

• Define your strategy: Identify business drivers, set measurable goals, and align them with migration strategies like rehost, replatform, or refactor.
• Plan with workload inventories: Catalog IT components, map dependencies, and assign migration strategies to ensure smooth transitions.
• Prepare Azure landing zones: Set up secure, scalable environments with governance and automation using tools like Azure Policy and Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
• Migrate and modernize workloads: Use Azure Migrate to assess and transition workloads effectively, and modernize applications with Azure services for better scalability and performance.
• Govern and manage: Implement policies, monitor costs, and automate operations to maintain security, compliance, and efficiency.

CAF emphasizes measurable results, such as cost reductions and improved system reliability. For example, Haleon reduced SAP hosting costs by 50% and ERP downtime by 95% in 2024. By following CAF, businesses can streamline their Azure migration and modernization efforts while ensuring alignment with operational goals.

Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework

Step 1: Define Your Strategy and Business Alignment

Before migrating to Azure, take a moment to ask yourself: Why move to the cloud? The Strategy methodology in the Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) is designed to connect cloud initiatives directly to measurable business goals and ROI targets. Without this connection, organizations can face governance issues, security risks, and ballooning costs.

Pinpoint Business Drivers and Outcomes

Business drivers explain why a workload needs to change. These could include improving agility, speeding up innovation, or cutting costs. The first step is to conduct a gap analysis to assess how current performance, scalability, or architectural issues are holding you back from achieving your desired outcomes.

A helpful tool here is the Cloud Adoption Strategy Evaluator, which identifies gaps and provides a tailored benchmark report. This tool can help you document your motivations - whether it's retiring outdated infrastructure, reducing technical debt, or adopting cloud-native capabilities. For example, in 2024, Aurobay used this approach to shift from on-premises limitations to a cloud-native setup. Sofia Hagberg, Head of Digital Platforms and Data Innovation at Aurobay, shared:

"The people who start working with us now will never know the old on-premises world, so our Azure deployment makes a huge difference in their ability to run environments by themselves in the most cost-efficient way."

Once you’ve identified your key drivers, align them with specific migration strategies. For instance, if your driver is to reduce maintenance by adopting PaaS, your strategy might be Replatform. If the goal is to eliminate low-value workloads, the strategy would be Retire. Using the Business Outcome Template can help you standardize how these outcomes are defined and prioritized across teams, ensuring alignment on success criteria.

Define Measurable Success Metrics

With your drivers in place, the next step is to set clear, measurable goals. Vague objectives lead to vague results, so it’s crucial to define metrics that will help you track ROI and operational gains throughout the migration. For instance, you might aim to cut infrastructure and licensing costs by 25% within the first year, achieve 95% observability, or improve application response times by 40%.

To prioritize workloads, use a matrix that evaluates Business Value (such as revenue impact, customer experience, or compliance needs) against Technical Risk (like technical debt, outdated tech, or security issues). Focus on workloads with high business value and high technical risk - they often deliver the highest ROI. Additionally, keep an eye out for urgent triggers like security vulnerabilities or end-of-support deadlines within the next year, which should push certain workloads to the top of your list.

Organizations that set clear metrics from the outset often see better results. For example, some companies validate their rehosting strategies by setting a target to decommission 30% of their on-premises infrastructure after migration. This kind of concrete goal keeps the project focused and decision-making aligned throughout the process.

Step 2: Plan Your Roadmap with Workload Inventories

With your strategy and metrics in place, it’s time to dig into the details of what you’re migrating. A workload refers to a collection of IT components - like servers, virtual machines (VMs), applications, and data - that support a specific business function. Without a proper inventory, you risk overlooking dependencies, misjudging timelines, or mismanaging the order of migration.

Document Workload Inventories

Start by cataloging all workloads. For each one, document key details such as the owner(s), its importance to the business (High/Medium/Low), the business functions it supports, the sensitivity of its data (Public, Internal, Confidential), and any regulatory requirements like PCI, HIPAA, or GDPR. These details will play a critical role in shaping your Azure architecture and establishing security protocols.

To simplify this process, leverage Azure Migrate to automatically discover servers, applications, and their interdependencies. This approach minimizes manual errors and speeds things up. In cases where automated discovery isn’t feasible due to security policies, use the Azure Migrate import template to manually list assets. Be thorough - map all dependencies:

• Direct dependencies (those needing low latency) should migrate together in the same wave.
• Indirect dependencies (latency-tolerant ones) can be split across waves.
• Business dependencies (like reporting or management relationships) should be grouped based on organizational priorities.

Once you’ve inventoried workloads and mapped out their dependencies, assign a migration strategy to each.

Define Migration Strategies

The Cloud Adoption Framework outlines several approaches, often referred to as the "Rs" of migration: Retire (eliminate), Retain (keep on-premises), Rehost (lift-and-shift), Replatform (modernize hosting), Refactor (modernize code), Rearchitect (redesign), Rebuild (cloud-native), or Replace (SaaS). The right choice depends on the characteristics of each workload.

• Rehost works well for stable workloads that require minimal changes.
• Replatform is ideal when you want to reduce maintenance by moving to Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) options like Azure SQL Database or App Service.
• Refactor is a good option for workloads with high maintenance costs where improved observability or reduced technical debt is a priority.
• For workloads needing advanced cloud-native features - such as modular scaling or event-driven architecture - Rearchitect or Rebuild are the better options.

Here’s a quick comparison to guide your decisions:

Set Timelines and Dependencies

With strategies in place, group workloads into migration waves based on their dependencies and associated risks. Start with non-production environments to validate your approach, and then aim for quick wins in production to build momentum and demonstrate early success.

When planning timelines, consider operational constraints like maintenance windows, blackout periods (e.g., financial close or holiday peaks), and uptime requirements. Be sure to include buffer time for testing and troubleshooting - this will help avoid delays when unexpected challenges arise. Also, test rollback procedures in preproduction to ensure you can recover quickly if needed.

Finally, review your migration plan with business and IT stakeholders to confirm the sequence aligns with their needs. This collaborative step ensures everyone understands what’s moving, when it’s happening, and why. It also helps avoid last-minute objections or surprises down the road.

Step 3: Prepare Azure Landing Zones

With your workload inventories and migration strategies in place, the next step is to set up a solid Azure landing zone. Think of a landing zone as the foundational environment in Azure where your applications will live. Without this foundation, you could face challenges like security vulnerabilities, governance gaps, and scalability issues.

An Azure landing zone isn’t just a single subscription - it’s an organized framework. It includes platform landing zones, which provide centralized services such as identity, connectivity, and management, and application landing zones, which are dedicated subscriptions for specific workloads. Every subscription, whether part of the platform or an application, needs to have Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Cost Management, Network Watcher, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud set up from the very beginning. Once these are in place, deploy your landing zones using strong governance models.

Deploy Landing Zones with Governance

Use Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Bicep or Terraform to deploy your landing zones. This approach ensures version control, repeatability, and scalability while minimizing manual errors. Microsoft offers Azure Verified Modules (AVM), which are pre-built and tested components that follow best practices, saving you the hassle of writing and maintaining custom code.

Create a management group hierarchy to ensure Azure Policy definitions apply to all child subscriptions. For instance, you can set up groups for "Online" workloads (internet-facing apps) and "Corp" workloads (internal systems), each with policies tailored to their specific compliance and security needs.

Once your hierarchy is established, implement subscription vending to automate the creation of new application landing zones. These zones will come with pre-configured networking and security settings. This automation eliminates manual setup and guarantees that every new workload meets your governance standards right from the start. This foundation is critical for supporting your broader Azure modernization efforts.

If you’re new to IaC and need a faster start, you can use the Portal-based accelerator, which provides a graphical interface for setting up your landing zones. However, plan to transition to IaC as soon as possible - it’s the most efficient way to handle updates and scale over time.

With your landing zones ready, focus on building strong security measures.

Implement Security Baselines

From the start, enforce security baselines across all your subscriptions. This includes zero-trust controls, continuous threat monitoring via Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and automated compliance enforcement through Azure Policy.

Azure Policy can replace manual change reviews with automated guardrails. For example, you can enforce tagging for cost tracking, ensure all virtual machines have disk encryption enabled, or block resource deployments in unapproved regions. These policies continuously audit compliance and can even automatically fix non-compliant resources.

For industries like financial services or healthcare - or any organization subject to regulations like HIPAA, PCI-DSS, or SOC 2 - map specific regulatory requirements directly to Azure Policy definitions and role assignments. This ensures that all subscriptions inherit the necessary controls without manual intervention. If you’re managing hybrid or multicloud setups, Azure Arc can extend these governance and compliance policies to on-premises servers and Kubernetes clusters.

Lastly, use tools like the Azure Governance Visualizer and AzAdvertizer to regularly review policy updates, compliance controls, and RBAC roles. These tools help you stay aligned with changing regulations and organizational standards, ensuring your landing zones remain secure and compliant over time.

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Step 4: Migrate and Modernize Workloads

With your landing zones in place and secured, it's time to dive into the Adopt phase of the Cloud Adoption Framework. This is where workloads are moved to Azure, and applications are modernized to deliver meaningful business outcomes. The focus here should be on improving performance, scalability, and ensuring alignment with your business objectives. To ease the transition from on-premises systems to the cloud, Azure Migrate is an essential tool.

Using Azure Migrate for Workload Transitions

Azure Migrate simplifies the process of identifying and assessing workloads across various environments, including VMware, Hyper-V, physical servers, AWS, and Google Cloud. It gathers performance metrics like CPU usage, memory consumption, disk I/O, and network throughput, enabling you to allocate the right amount of Azure resources without over-provisioning. Additionally, it maps dependencies between workloads, helping you structure migrations in waves to minimize service interruptions.

However, automated tools like Azure Migrate may not catch everything. To ensure accuracy, validate its findings with input from workload owners. They can help identify undocumented dependencies or outdated configurations that might otherwise go unnoticed. It’s also a good idea to create a risk register, categorizing any compatibility issues as either blockers - which must be resolved before migration - or as tasks to address post-migration. For instance, if the tool flags unsupported middleware or deprecated operating systems, these should be addressed immediately to avoid future roadblocks.

For application code readiness, tools like GitHub Copilot can provide valuable support, streamlining the process of preparing your applications for the cloud.

Modernizing with Azure Services

Once your workloads are migrated, the next step is modernization - making your applications more efficient and better aligned with cloud capabilities. This could involve replatforming, refactoring, or rearchitecting existing workloads to meet cloud best practices, all without adding new features.

The Azure Well-Architected Framework (WAF) is a helpful guide for evaluating workloads across five key areas: Reliability, Security, Cost Optimization, Operational Excellence, and Performance Efficiency. These assessments highlight gaps and provide a roadmap for improvement. For example, if a workload struggles with traffic spikes, you might move it to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for containerization, Azure App Service for managed hosting, or Azure Functions for serverless, event-driven execution.

When deciding what to modernize first, weigh the business value (such as revenue impact or customer experience improvements) against technical risks (like outdated technology or high maintenance demands). High-value, high-risk workloads should take precedence. For instance, a legacy application nearing end-of-support that generates substantial revenue is an excellent candidate for immediate modernization, as it offers a strong return on investment.

Measuring Migration Success Against Business Goals

After migration, it’s crucial to measure success against the metrics you established in Step 1. Don’t just move workloads and call it a day - track how the migration impacts key business outcomes and cost efficiencies. Focus on metrics like performance and reliability of revenue-critical systems, customer experience, and regulatory compliance. Also, monitor reductions in manual interventions, support costs, and risks tied to outdated technology.

Operational agility is another important metric. Assess how well your system handles load spikes and how quickly new deployments can be rolled out using CI/CD pipelines. Additionally, track the financial shift from capital expenditures (CapEx) to operating expenditures (OpEx) and evaluate whether your ROI goals are being met. For instance, if your objective was to cut maintenance costs by 30%, verify that post-migration data reflects a corresponding drop in support hours or incident rates.

Empower your application teams to make technical decisions within the boundaries of your business goals. These teams have the best understanding of system pain points and maintenance challenges. Regular Well-Architected Reviews are essential for identifying new gaps as workloads evolve. These reviews act as a roadmap for ongoing improvements, ensuring your Azure environment continues to meet your business needs over time.

Step 5: Set Up Governance and Management

After modernizing workloads, the next crucial step is establishing strong governance to maintain performance and security. Without proper oversight, you risk overspending, security vulnerabilities, and operational inefficiencies. This phase focuses on setting up guardrails - policies, procedures, and tools - that align your cloud usage with business goals while minimizing risks.

Implement Governance Policies

To enforce governance effectively, create a dedicated team with support from your CIO or CTO. Tools like Azure Policy are essential for automating compliance. With Azure Policy, you can block non-compliant actions or flag them for review. Use it to manage governance, resource tagging, and cost controls across all subscriptions. For consistency, apply policies at scale using Management Groups, which allow you to enforce rules across multiple subscriptions simultaneously.

Start small with a Governance MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that addresses five key areas: cost management, security baseline, resource consistency, identity baseline, and deployment automation. Utilize a RACI matrix to clarify roles and responsibilities for tasks like risk assessment and policy enforcement. This avoids confusion between governance and workload teams. Additionally, integrate Microsoft Defender for Cloud to identify and resolve security issues, strengthening your overall security posture.

Monitor Costs and Optimize Resources

Once policies are in place, focus on controlling expenses by continuously monitoring and optimizing resources. Cost management is a shared responsibility: central platform teams handle global budgets and reporting, while workload teams focus on application-specific resource efficiency. Since Azure doesn't offer a universal subscription spending cap, monitoring becomes your primary tool for managing costs.

Use Azure Advisor to regularly review recommendations, such as removing unused or underutilized resources that add to "resource sprawl". Empower workload teams by giving them direct access to billing data, encouraging accountability and adherence to budget limits.

To automate cost management, integrate Azure Monitor with your ticketing or ITSM systems. This setup can trigger alerts when spending approaches predefined thresholds. During the workload design phase, apply the Well-Architected Framework's Cost Optimization checklist to ensure efficiency is built into your processes from the start.

Set Up Continuous Operations Baselines

Sustaining long-term success requires a focus on continuous operations. The Cloud Adoption Framework's Manage methodology uses the RAMP approach - Ready, Administer, Monitor, Protect - to build operational resilience.

Management responsibilities are split between central platform teams, who oversee the entire cloud environment, and workload teams, who focus on individual applications. The Well-Architected Framework's Operational Excellence pillar offers specific guidance for managing workload-level responsibilities.

Automate repetitive tasks using tools like Azure Logic Apps for low-risk approvals and Azure Automation to minimize manual errors. To maintain consistency, implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with tools like Bicep, Terraform, or ARM templates, which help prevent configuration drift. Review metrics, incidents, and risks weekly to manage technical debt and avoid resource sprawl.

Ensure round-the-clock support with a "follow-the-sun" model or structured on-call rotations. Use automated alerts from Azure Monitor to streamline incident response. Tools like the Azure Governance Visualizer can help map management group hierarchies, providing detailed insights into policy compliance.

Sofia Hagberg, Head of Digital Platforms and Data Innovation at Aurobay, shared her experience with structured Azure management:

"The people who start working with us now will never know the old on-premises world, so our Azure deployment makes a huge difference in their ability to run environments by themselves in the most cost-efficient way".

Accelerate Your Roadmap with AppStream Studio

Once you've laid the groundwork with governance and a modernization strategy, the next big challenge is execution. The speed at which you move forward can make or break the success of your Azure modernization efforts. AppStream Studio steps in to help mid-market organizations transition from strategy to production more efficiently. By combining the structured approach of the Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) with a team of senior engineers skilled in Azure, .NET, and SQL, they ensure your roadmap doesn't get stuck in endless planning.

Move Faster with Expert Engineering Pods

AppStream's engineering pods deliver measurable results in just weeks. These highly skilled teams follow the CAF's "Ready" and "Adopt" phases, using automated tools like deployment accelerators and landing zones to minimize migration risks and shorten timelines. By focusing on production-ready integrations, unified data systems, and AI automation, they cut through inefficiencies often seen with larger consultancies. This streamlined process ensures your modernization plan moves seamlessly from planning to production, without unnecessary delays.

Customized Solutions for Regulated Industries

For organizations in healthcare, financial services, and construction, compliance isn't optional - it's critical. AppStream understands the unique challenges of regulated industries and tailors solutions to meet strict requirements. Whether you're dealing with HIPAA, SOC 2 audits, or other industry-specific regulations, their approach ensures your systems are secure, auditable, and compliant from the start. Instead of juggling multiple vendors, AppStream provides a single, accountable team that specializes in Microsoft environments and compliance, simplifying the entire process.

Modernize with AI and Unified Data

AppStream also integrates the CAF's AI scenario to implement ethical and scalable AI solutions. Their approach includes MLOps automation to streamline AI deployment and ensure responsible use. By consolidating scattered data sources into secure, scalable platforms, they enable real-time insights and advanced analytics. AppStream also deploys AI agents to automate workflows and builds enterprise-grade knowledge platforms using RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), giving your organization the tools to harness AI effectively in production environments.

Conclusion

The Azure Cloud Adoption Framework offers a clear and effective path for modernization, guiding organizations through everything from aligning strategies with business goals to planning workload inventories, deploying secure landing zones, and establishing governance. When followed correctly, this framework delivers measurable results. For example, in 2025, Haleon managed to cut its SAP hosting costs in half and reduce ERP downtime by an impressive 95%. This highlights how critical swift and accurate execution is for successful cloud modernization.

Execution is where plans turn into tangible outcomes. However, mid-market organizations often struggle with fragmented vendor relationships, skill shortages, and delays that hinder progress and diminish business value.

To tackle these obstacles, AppStream Studio blends the principles of the Cloud Adoption Framework with specialized engineering teams skilled in Azure, .NET, and SQL. Their approach ensures seamless integrations, unified data management, and governed AI automation - all delivered in just weeks. For industries with strict regulations, like financial services, healthcare, and construction, AppStream guarantees that your modernization efforts are secure, auditable, and compliant right from the start.

FAQs

What are the main advantages of using the Azure Cloud Adoption Framework for migration to Azure?

The Azure Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) streamlines the process of migrating workloads to Azure by providing a structured and clear approach. It bridges the gap between technical execution and business objectives, helping to minimize risks and speed up the migration journey. By following its detailed guidance, tools, and best practices, organizations can transition to the cloud with greater ease and efficiency.

Here’s what makes CAF stand out:

• Strategic planning and governance: CAF lays out a comprehensive roadmap that covers everything from strategy and planning to design and migration. It ensures compliance and security are integrated right from the start, keeping your cloud adoption efforts aligned with your business goals.
• Readiness assessments: With built-in tools, CAF helps you assess your current cloud maturity and identify priority actions. This targeted approach ensures your migration efforts are both focused and effective.
• Scalable architectures: Reusable landing-zone designs make it easier to manage and scale your cloud environment. These designs support both older systems and modern cloud-native workloads, all while maintaining consistent governance.

By leveraging CAF, businesses can confidently modernize their operations on Azure, achieve scalable solutions that are cost-efficient, and move closer to a fully optimized cloud environment.

How can organizations set up secure and compliant Azure landing zones?

Azure landing zones offer a well-structured and secure foundation for deploying workloads and resources in Azure. By leveraging the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF), businesses can embed compliance and security controls directly into the landing zone from the outset, ensuring every resource operates within set policies.

To build a secure and compliant landing zone, consider the following steps:

• Set up management groups and subscription hierarchies that reflect your legal and operational boundaries.
• Use tools like Azure Policy and Azure Blueprints to enforce standards such as PCI-DSS, HIPAA, or FedRAMP, while also preventing configuration drift.
• Implement role-based access control (RBAC) and Conditional Access to ensure only authorized users can make resource changes.
• Enable Azure Security Center/Defender and other monitoring tools to detect threats in real time and maintain detailed logging.
• Strengthen data protection with network security features, including Azure Firewall, network security groups (NSGs), and private endpoints.

AppStream Studio streamlines this process by offering Azure-native modernization services that come pre-configured with essential policies, identity safeguards, and monitoring systems. This approach helps mid-market organizations achieve production-ready security and compliance in just weeks, cutting down significantly on setup time.

What are the best strategies for modernizing applications after migrating to Azure?

After migrating to Azure, modernizing your applications can follow the Cloud Adoption Framework's "-R" strategies, which offer different levels of transformation depending on your business goals. Here's a quick breakdown:

• Rehost: This approach involves lifting and shifting your applications to Azure Virtual Machines with minimal changes, making it a quick way to start.
• Replatform: With small adjustments to your code, you can move to managed services like Azure App Service or Azure SQL, reducing infrastructure management needs.
• Refactor: Modify parts of your application to take advantage of cloud-native tools, such as containers, Azure Kubernetes Service, or serverless functions.
• Rearchitect: Redesign applications for improved scalability, resilience, or to adopt a microservices architecture.
• Rebuild: Replace existing applications entirely, opting for SaaS solutions or low-code platforms.
• Retire: Decommission systems that no longer provide value to your operations.

To get started, establish a secure and well-structured Azure landing zone as your foundation. From there, you can streamline operations by using Azure PaaS services, containerizing your applications for flexibility, and setting up DevOps pipelines for seamless integration and delivery. Modernization also opens the door to incorporating Azure-native AI and data services gradually, enhancing the performance and functionality of your refactored applications.

For a faster path to results, AppStream Studio offers production-ready solutions built on Azure, .NET, and SQL. With expertise in data, APIs, and AI, they can help you achieve impactful outcomes efficiently and effectively.