Cloud Migration Issues & Fixes
Here you are… starting your journey to the Cloud. How to put your Cloud journey on rail from the beginning ?
Well… there is quite a lot of preparation work to do before reaching the sky, but one efficient way is to learn from others. What are success and failure origins ?
most common challenges ? how to overcome them ? This is what we will look at in the rest of this article.
#1 – Strategy, Timing and Batch approach
Business objectives (agility, flexibility, performance, cost, digital transformation…) will drive the strategy. This is not only about selecting the right Cloud service provider. It is more about a solid change management plan covering: cost analysis, projected downtime, employee capacity, and timelines.
The migration should be split in batches. Preferably starting with non-critical application & duplicated data to limit the impact of any errors coming from the staffs.
#2 – Financial cost
Cloud is cost-effective in the long term. However, migration costs need to be considered as:
– Rewriting application architecture for the cloud
– Investing in people and tools needed to migrate successfully
– Training users on the new systems
– Performance issues including latency, interoperability, dependencies on non-cloud apps, and downtime
– Bandwidth costs
Batch approach will reduce the money invested upfront, giving more flexibility and options. It has the advantage of breaking down what can be a financially overwhelming project into more manageable pieces over time
#3 – People and Processes
When it comes to Cloud adoption, the biggest challenge isn’t technology. It’s the people and processes that must change and adapt. This takes time, limiting the effectiveness of Cloud adoption. Younger companies and those with tech innovation test centres will make this transition easier. The biggest enterprises will have a long tail of transition when it comes to full Cloud adoption.
Early involvement, intensive training and leadership buy-in are critical to ensure a good change adoption.
#4 – Cloud Security
This could be the main barrier to the Cloud adoption and should be considered as top priority. Cloud providers hold company data and it his essential that they demonstrate trustworthiness by detailing security practices. Today, main Cloud providers have detailed documentation to illustrate protection measures, data location and regulations they are compliant with.
#5 – Prevent vendor lock-in
Vendor lock-in is a common problem for adopters of Cloud technology due to complexity and cost to move data. Most businesses will simply stick to one vendor even if it isn’t the best fit for them. When choosing a Cloud provider it is important to check the SLA (Service-Level Agreements) to ensure what services it will do to assist in migrating to another cloud service provider.
— posted by the Open Cloud Society content team
— Sources:
Open Could Society people (thanks to you guys !)
Forbes, full article here
Lucidchart, full article here
Solution Review, full article here