Cloudbees Ceo: Why Migration Is A Mirage Costing You Millions

A caller study shows that, past year, 57% of endeavor organizations spent complete $1 cardinal connected migration projects — pinch an mean nonaccomplishment of $315,000 per task owed to unexpected overruns — successful pursuit of what Anuj Kapur, CEO of CloudBees, calls “the migration mirage.”

In this section of The New Stack Makers, Kapur sat down pinch TNS Founder and Publisher Alex Williams to talk nan findings from nan CloudBees “2025 DevOps Migration Index” report. Published successful November, it’s nan first study of its benignant to quantify nan symptom (and nan often-elusive rewards) of trying to execute modernization done migration, and why nan consequence has organizations chasing a early that keeps receding.

The Hazards of Underestimating System Longevity

Technical leaders are nether changeless unit to move faster, adopt AI and modernize aging systems. Unfortunately, galore determine to switch everything pinch 1 consolidated level while underestimating conscionable really resilient and valuable their existing infrastructure really is.

“The half-life of an endeavor exertion is astir apt 5 times nan half-life of an endeavor CIO,” Kapur said. “CIOs travel and go, applications don’t.“

As a result, he said, organizations underestimate nan longevity of their systems and nan resiliency of nan infrastructure that exists to really support them. Executives travel and spell while that decades-old bequest strategy conscionable keeps moving — until, that is, caller activity arrives pinch caller modernization mandates.

“Modernization is very basal successful some nan IT tier and nan exertion tier, but nan problem is we person travel to equate modernization pinch migration,” Kapur continued.

Modernization vs. Migration: A Critical Distinction

The “DevOps Migration Index” study is nan first quantitative appraisal of nan reality that, for astir organizations, modernization and migration are nan aforesaid thing.

“Migration takes longer, costs much and fundamentally pushes you backward,” Kapur said. “The resources that you should walk connected customer requirements are alternatively spent connected replatforming and restructuring your IT situation to beryllium capable to present worth astatine immoderate chartless constituent successful nan future.”

He calls this “the migration mirage.”

The Human Capital Costs of Migration

Beyond financial costs, migration besides carries quality superior costs successful nan shape of developer morale. “Engineers want to build things. They want to beryllium successful beforehand of customers. They want to thrust value,” Kapur said. “What they don’t want to do is fundamentally alteration systems that are really moving and delivering value.”

Rather than pushing customers toward a azygous platform, toolchain aliases moreover architecture, CloudBees advocates for gathering developers wherever they are.

“Telling developers what devices to usage is for illustration telling teenagers what to wear,” Kapur said. “If you’re empowering developers to build, if you judge that they’re nan focal constituent of nan transformation, past you request to dainty them for illustration adults.”

The afloat speech goes deeper into really organizations tin group guardrails without stifling creativity, what nan emergence of codification assistance devices intends for nan outer loop of improvement and why Kapur believes 2026 represents nan first “true renaissance of package development” since unreality became nan endeavor default astir a decade ago.

Group Created pinch Sketch.