As enterprise leaders finalize their tech budgets for the year ahead, a familiar line item is likely showing up: platform migration.
Whether driven by pressure to modernize for AI, reduce tool sprawl, or simplify their governance, large-scale DevOps migrations are often framed as an efficiency investment. They're treated as a necessary short-term disruption in exchange for long-term gains.
The problem? This assumption folds under scrutiny.
New research from our 2025 DevOps Migration Index report shows that platform migrations consistently fail to deliver the efficiency and cost savings they promise. Worse, they introduce a transformation tax—an accumulation of hidden losses and opportunity costs that rarely make it into the original business case.
For CFOs, CTOs, and engineering leaders alike, the takeaway is clear: More often than not, platform migrations are a guaranteed path to disruption and inefficiency.
The Data Behind the DevOps Migration Index
Our report is based on a survey of more than 300 enterprise IT and DevOps leaders across industries. Conducted by independent research firm TrendCandy, the study set out to answer a simple question: Do large-scale "rip and replace" platform migrations actually deliver the returns executives are sold?
The timing of the research is intentional. As AI adoption accelerates and boards push for visible modernization initiatives, many organizations are reaching for platform consolidation as a way to demonstrate progress. Migration feels decisive. It feels measurable. And on paper, it often looks financially sound.
But the data tells a very different story—one finance leaders can’t afford to ignore as budgets tighten and capital allocation decisions become more consequential.
Migrations Are a False Efficiency Play
Platform migrations are meant to enable fewer tools, lower operational overhead, faster delivery, and improved governance. In practice, those efficiencies rarely materialize.
According to the DevOps Migration Index:
57% of enterprises spent more than $1 million on platform migrations in the past year alone.
Projects ran an average of 18% over budget, adding roughly $315,000 in unplanned costs per organization.
37% of organizations said more than a quarter of their migration spend delivered no lasting business value. They lost their capital to abandoned implementations and rework.
60% missed revenue opportunities as funds and capacity were diverted away from growth initiatives.
From a finance perspective, this creates a troubling mismatch between forecasted ROI and realized outcomes. Migration projects are approved based on cost reduction and productivity assumptions, yet the majority exceed budget, delay value realization, and absorb capital that could have been invested elsewhere.
Why Migration ROI Doesn’t Materialize
Migrations don’t fail to deliver ROI because organizations execute them poorly. Rather, large-scale platform transitions introduce structural issues that make value difficult to realize at enterprise scale.
Sunk Costs and Budget Overruns Are the Norm
Migration business cases typically assume that disruption will be offset by operational gains. That's not quite the case. While 85% of enterprises completed a platform migration in the past two years, only 25% achieved the expected value within the first year. Meanwhile, 38% delivered less ROI than promised to executive sponsors and boards.
Once migration begins, organizations are often forced to keep spending to mitigate the project being derailed or stalled altogether. Licensing overlaps, extended consulting engagements, retraining costs, and parallel system maintenance compound quickly. What begins as a tightly scoped transformation project often becomes an open-ended financial commitment.
The Invisible Costs Finance Teams Rarely See
Some of the most damaging costs never appear in project budgets at all. Engineering resources pulled into migration work aren’t building new capabilities. In fast-moving markets, those delays can permanently erode competitive position.
The DevOps Migration Index reports that around 60% of migrations triggered missed revenue opportunities, including postponed product launches, delayed market entry, and deferred customer feature requests.
For leaders evaluating transformation ROI, these invisible costs—the innovations not built, the customers not won, the markets entered too late—often exceed the direct expenses that show up in financial models.
Migration Fatigue and the Human Cost of Transformation
Platform migrations also significantly impact development teams, with downstream business consequences.
The DevOps Migration Index found that 70% of enterprises experienced increased developer burnout during platform migrations. Only 24% reported high developer morale, and 61% said their teams avoided new initiatives for more than six months after migration.
When teams operate in migration survival mode, productivity drops, quality suffers, and security risks increase. Burned-out engineers cut corners on testing and review, resist adopting new systems fully, and are more likely to leave.
From a CFO’s perspective, developer burnout poses a material risk to delivery timelines, customer experience, and long-term growth that eventually impacts the bottom line.
The Integration-First Advantage: Modernization Without the Transformation Tax
If migration consistently underdelivers, what actually works for enterprises looking to become more efficient?
The Migration Index points to a clear alternative: integration-first modernization.
Rather than replacing and centralizing entire tech stacks, integration-first approaches focus on orchestrating and governing the systems enterprises already rely on. The idea is to modernize incrementally based on what's valuable to the business rather than forcing wholesale change.
The results are striking: 92% of organizations achieved greater delivery efficiency by integrating tools rather than replacing them.
What Integration-First Looks Like in Practice
Integration-first modernization involves creating a unified control plane that orchestrates across existing tools and systems. The goal is to provide centralized visibility and governance, without forcing teams to abandon their preferred platforms.
In practice, this approach delivers:
Immediate value, rather than delayed returns
No forced downtime or mass retraining
Preserved context, governance, and toolchain investments
Faster, safer adoption of new tech, with controls already in place
Instead of tearing down systems that work, organizations establish centralized visibility and governance across existing environments. They modernize progressively, improve decision-making, and retain the flexibility to adopt new technologies as needs evolve.
CloudBees Unify was designed as a unified control plane that integrates across the software delivery lifecycle and helps enterprises modernize without the added costs. It allows enterprises to modernize delivery and enforce consistent governance. By working across existing CI/CD tools, security systems, and environments, CloudBees Unify delivers the visibility and control leaders need without forcing teams to abandon what already works.
For organizations under pressure to modernize while protecting capital, that distinction matters.
Rethinking Modernization Decisions in 2026
As enterprises plan for the next phase of AI-driven software delivery, the question isn’t whether to modernize. It’s how.
The Migration Index shows us that rip-and-replace migrations are expensive bets with predictably poor returns. They absorb capital, delay innovation, and introduce risk at precisely the moment organizations need speed, flexibility, and governance.
Integration-first modernization offers a more financially responsible path forward. It aligns with operational reality and delivers value without disruption.
If your organization is budgeting for a platform migration in 2026, it’s worth revisiting the assumptions behind that decision.
Download the 2025 DevOps Migration Index report to explore the data in full and understand how leading enterprises are modernizing without migration.