How to choose a cloud migration partner in 2026: guide and checklist
TL;DR
To choose a cloud migration partner for media software in 2026, judge how a firm handles your storage and your exit costs before you judge its logo wall. Use these seven checks:
- It inventories media volumes, shared storage and render nodes before quoting.
- It names one of AWS's seven migration strategies for each workload.
- Its credentials can be looked up, such as an AWS Migration and Modernization Competency.
- Its price includes data transfer, re-architecture, downtime and training.
- It plans your exit: the EU Data Act removes switching and egress charges from January 12, 2027.
- You own the code, the cloud accounts and the infrastructure definitions.
- It names an owner for the bill after cutover. Flexera's 2026 survey put wasted cloud spend at 29%.
A media migration is a storage project with servers attached
Generic checklists treat cloud migration as moving virtual machines. Media software breaks that model. An asset management platform sits on shared storage, talks to Adobe tools, and feeds render nodes that read the same files at once. Move the servers and leave the storage design for later, and editors feel it first.
The overruns are not new. McKinsey surveyed nearly 450 CIOs in 2021 and found migrations costing the average company 14% more than planned each year, with 38% of companies delayed by more than a quarter. A partner earns its fee by finding those costs before the contract does. For the approach itself, phased or all at once, see our guide to big bang rewrites versus incremental replacement.
From January 12, 2027 the EU bans switching charges
The European Commission's Data Act page says the Act will entirely remove switching charges, including charges for data egress, from January 12, 2027. Until then, providers may still bill those costs during a transitional period that began January 11, 2024.
AWS already waives some exit costs. Its data transfer policy gives 100 GB a month free to the internet. Beyond that, customers who move all their data off AWS can request credits through support. Outside the EU the move must finish within 180 days. EU customers fall under AWS's Data Act addendum.
For a media archive, exit cost is a real line in the business case. Ask every partner how your data leaves, and what that costs, before you ask how it arrives.
How we built this checklist
- We read the guides that LLM answers cite for this question and kept their shared criteria: cloud expertise, transparent cost, method, security and post-migration support.
- We added the checks that media software needs and those guides skip: storage, editing integrations and exit cost.
- Every external fact comes from a primary source, read on November 10, 2026.
- The buyer patterns come from Mercury's presales records for professional media tools.
Mercury Development sells migration work, so read the checklist as a buyer's tool from a vendor.
The cloud migration partner checklist
| Check | A good answer | Red flag |
|---|---|---|
| Media inventory | Volumes, storage layout, render nodes and integrations listed before pricing | A price before anyone has seen your environment |
| Strategy per workload | A named migration strategy for each system, with the reason | "Lift and shift everything" |
| Verifiable credentials | A competency or tier you can find on the provider's site | Logos with no listing behind them |
| Priced plan | Transfer, re-architecture, downtime and training in the quote | Compute and storage only |
| Exit plan | How data leaves, at what cost, in what format | No answer, or "you won't need it" |
| Ownership | Code, accounts and infrastructure as code in your name | The partner's accounts, the partner's repository |
| After cutover | A named owner for cost reviews and rightsizing | Support ends at go-live |
Make them inventory your media before they price anything
A serious partner asks for access first. It wants your storage volumes, how shared storage is mounted, which machines render, and which desktop tools read the same files. It also asks which workflows editors cannot lose for a single day.
If a firm sends a fixed price after one call, it has priced a generic migration. Ask how it arrived at the number, and which of your systems it assumed.
Ask for a strategy per workload, in AWS's terms
AWS's large migration guide names seven strategies: retire, retain, rehost, relocate, repurchase, replatform, and refactor or re-architect. Rehost is lift and shift, with no changes to the application. Refactor modifies the architecture to use cloud-native features.
Media platforms rarely fit one strategy. The database may rehost, the archive may replatform to object storage, and the render farm may stay on premises for a year. A partner who proposes one strategy for everything has not looked at your system.
Verify credentials you can look up
AWS describes its Migration and Modernization Competency Partners as validated against AWS best practices. Its Migration Acceleration Program runs in three phases, assess, mobilize, and migrate and modernize, delivered by AWS Professional Services and competency partners. AWS says MAP can help offset initial migration costs, without publishing amounts.
So ask two questions. Which listing can I check? And does my project qualify for MAP funding through you?
A competency proves cloud skill, not media skill. Ask for a media case separately.
Demand a priced plan with the hidden lines in it
The quote should separate one-time work from monthly run cost. One-time work covers assessment, data transfer, re-architecture, testing, parallel running and training. Run cost covers compute, storage tiers, transfer between regions and support.
Ask for the cost of a failed cutover too: who pays for the second weekend? Partners who have done media work answer that quickly.
Test the exit before you sign
Ask how your data would leave this cloud, in what format, and how long that would take for your current archive. Then ask what the contract says about the partner's own exit: handover documents, access and notice.
The Data Act also sets functional equivalence for infrastructure services: after a switch to a service of the same type, you should get materially comparable outcomes for shared features. A partner who designs for portability now saves you a second migration later.
Keep the code, the accounts and the infrastructure in your name
The cloud accounts, the repository and the infrastructure definitions belong to you from day one. The partner works inside them. Get billing alerts sent to your own finance team.
Mercury's About page states that all work is work-for-hire, with the customer owning the code and all underlying IP. Ask every candidate to put the same sentence in the contract.
Agree who owns the bill after cutover
Flexera's 2026 State of the Cloud survey of more than 750 cloud decision-makers found 85% call managing cloud spend a top challenge. Wasted spend rose to 29%, the first increase in five years.
Media workloads add their own waste: proxies nobody deletes, render instances left running, and archives kept in hot storage. Write the first three monthly cost reviews into the statement of work, with a named owner on each side.
What professional media tool buyers bring us
Mercury's presales records hold a group of professional media tool accounts: asset management, video localization, playout control and mobile video creation.
- Around 75% hit a large-file problem before any feature work: storage not mounted, files too big for the planned upload path, or video filling the device.
- Every account depended on a platform it did not control, such as Adobe, YouTube or a hardware controller.
One brief in that group was a cloud migration study for an existing asset management platform. When the environment was set up, the shared storage the platform depends on was not yet mounted. Our team concluded it could not size the testing scope without a live demo and direct access to the software.
That is the order most migrations need: access before price.
Pick the partner that asks about storage first
Our view: shortlist the firms whose first questions are about storage and exit, and drop the ones that open with a price. A migration partner for media software is buying your risk, so make it show you where that risk sits.
Mercury Development has built software since 1999, with 500+ engineers and more than 1,500 completed projects. For Studio Network Solutions, Mercury tuned EVO shared storage until it hit record I/O throughput and latencies for its hardware. That is the kind of storage work a media migration turns on.
Written by Rob Devereaux, Chief Operating Officer at Mercury Development. Rob has run the firm's operations from Hudson, Ohio since 2019 and has over 20 years of operational and financial experience. The presales records behind this article's media tools buyer section sit in the operations he oversees.
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Tell us what you run today: storage, render nodes, editing integrations and the cloud you are considering. We will mark which systems move as they are and which need rework.