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Six common cloud migration challenges and how to tackle them

Posted August 24, 2022
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For many companies, cloud migration — the process of moving digital assets such as data, applications and other business elements from on-premises infrastructure to a cloud computing environment — is a strategic imperative.

And while the journey to the cloud can be a resource-intensive process that poses several challenges, businesses that have completed the task have benefitted in a major way.

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Benefits of cloud migration for enterprises

The advantages of moving to the cloud are becoming well understood not only by information technology (IT) leaders, but by all members of an organization — from executives to support staff.

For instance, cloud contact centers enable brands to centralize customer information so that agents don’t have to move between multiple systems and platforms when supporting customers.

Some other benefits include the following.

Cost-efficiency: Cloud migration allows your business to avoid IT capital expenditures such as hardware and software purchases. Additionally, many cloud providers offer service-level agreements that allow your business to pay only for the computing resources you use.

Scalability: Cloud migration allows your business to easily alter its resources according to business cycles. And since you don’t have to purchase larger or more powerful servers, your business can handle fluctuations in workloads more effectively and efficiently.

Agility: Compared to setting up traditional IT infrastructure, cloud platforms can be deployed with much more rapidity. As a result, your business can take advantage of operational efficiencies such as faster time-to-market for products and services.

However, for business leaders to reap the full benefits of the cloud, they need to have a robust migration strategy in place. A proper plan makes it easier to side-step or overcome the most common cloud migration obstacles.

Six common cloud migration challenges

With careful planning, and the right cloud migration partner, the following migration challenges can be avoided.

1. Lack of internal resources: Inadequate in-house expertise can cause significant roadblocks. Not having professionals with cloud migration skills on hand can lead to errors that result in spending more money, rather than saving it.

2. Not understanding digital trends: While moving to the cloud requires some know-how at the start, it becomes easier and less costly to manage data assets in the cloud over time, assuming you can keep on top of digital trends. Tech strategies and skills evolve quickly, and it’s difficult to keep up with the latest insights if you don’t have resources and expertise at the ready.

3. Taking an all-or-nothing approach: It’s a mistake to think you have to migrate all of your applications and IT infrastructure to the cloud at once. Some businesses worry that the cloud can’t support their entire workload. They then allow that belief to stall their efforts and keep them from beginning a cloud migration. But it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing approach. In some cases, a hybrid strategy that carefully selects the right platform for each application is best.

4. Getting started too quickly: Cloud migration best practices dictate that companies shouldn’t start a migration before fully understanding what they’re moving and why. Beginning your migration before your organization is ready may stall your progress right out of the gate, ultimately costing you more money than predicted.

5. Taking a one-size-fits-all approach: Not every application will perform best in a cloud environment, and, in terms of cloud environments, not everything works best in a public cloud. In fact, many organizations today still have a hybrid cloud infrastructure, opting for a mix of public, private and hybrid clouds. With that in mind, figure out a cloud migration strategy based on your individual business needs, then determine what cloud services are available to support you (e.g., infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and more).

6. No adoption strategy: Save time by getting executive and senior management buy-in from the start. It’s not uncommon for existing managers and employees to resist change, so ensuring department leaders endorse a cloud migration will help you devise the right adoption strategy.

Cloud migration best practices

Understanding common cloud migration challenges and adopting best practices are two sides of the same coin. Building a cloud migration blueprint that integrates leading strategy, processes and tools is another key component of success. Here are a few best practices to consider as part of your overall plan.

Set objectives and communicate accordingly: Before you create your cloud migration strategy, know exactly what business objectives you’re trying to achieve. Identify your team’s concerns so you can address them and keep employees feeling positive about the migration.

Carefully map out all aspects of the migration and start slowly: Know which apps will work better in the public cloud versus private or hybrid clouds. Start with applications that are relatively easy to migrate and learn from those processes before tackling more challenging parts of the project.

Consider the unique requirements of your particular organization: The pay-per-usage public cloud is highly scalable but isn’t always the right choice for a sensitive workload. Private clouds suit companies with the budgets to run an on-premises cloud tailored to their needs. A hybrid cloud can let you get the best of both worlds.

Create a cloud transformation budget: Forecasting cloud migration costs accurately can be critical to its success. You’ll have to consider how many assets you are moving, cloud infrastructure costs, how long the migration will take, expert consultant costs and post-migration costs such as application testing, administration, training and labor.

Benefits of outsourcing to an experienced cloud partner

Every cloud migration requires an individually tailored, comprehensive plan designed to meet the organization’s specific business goals. An experienced cloud partner can help you achieve this goal.

Our team of experts will work with you to understand business and IT needs, map your transformation goals, assess your workloads, evaluate cloud readiness, plot an effective migration strategy and deploy your applications to the right cloud platform.

Reach out to our digital IT specialist to accelerate your cloud adoption today.


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