Businesses today thrive in a turbulent phase, exploiting every opportunity that buoys their profit margin. Organizations swarm to the cloud to stay nimble, cut costs, and ensure future thrive, as technology penetrates every part of a consumer’s life. According to Gartner, over 30% of new software investments of technology providers will shift to cloud-only. An influx of new challenges and uncertainties are emerging in line with technologies for businesses to combat and rise to shine in the new era of cloud computing.
The cloud migration challenges that emerged are pervasive, with data loss, cyber-attacks, data center closures, stringent regulatory compliance being issues of major concern for any cloud architect or CIO. Businesses are therefore looking ahead and preparing themselves accordingly for a controlled and secure cloud migration. However, meticulous planning combined with an exquisite execution is indispensable, which is why cloud migration is considered as a tedious pain spectrum, second to cloud security.
Let us first look at some cloud migration challenges that organizations face and then at key solutions that effectively address them, to minimize risk and maximize the upside of the migration process.
Cloud Migration Challenges Faced by Organizations
Narrow Analysis of Migration Cost
If you fail to analyze the cost of cloud computing strategy, the migration process will eat into your expenses that are meant for other business activities and errands. The cloud server also generates a huge bill at the month’s end. The costs associated with migration and operation must be evaluated properly in advance so that you can save on your cost. Elements such as capital expenditure, operational expenditure, and overhead expenses must be considered while calculating the total cost of ownership or return on investment. It is a must that the CIOs focus on evaluating the cloud migration cost on the basis of their business requirements and budget.
Vendor Lock-in
In case some things go wrong with the CSP’ after the migration process, the organizations are compelled to switch to another vendor. This entails a significant expenditure, which is why several businesses look to multiple cloud vendors for their data, infrastructure, and applications to evade risks and save on costs. Most of the CSPs in the market operate with similar concepts and it is, therefore, necessary that you compare them based on their service offerings. Key considerations for the selection of a CSP are cloud migration goals, cloud component necessities, manageability, service levels, support, and costs. Adopters of cloud technology commonly face the issue of vendor lock-in. You must look for SLAs that include information on efforts that the vendor would take in case you are considering to stop using their services.
Privacy and Security
At present, the cloud vendors comprise advanced security systems that ensure a tamper-proof environment, be it private, public, or hybrid cloud. Before you partner with any CSP, getting a detailed knowledge of key areas such as data migration from the cloud, security governance procedures and policies, end-to-end data encryption, and data storage location, is a must.
Poorly Defined Business Objectives and Strategy
The most significant error made by organizations in their move to the cloud is not coming up with a proper strategy. End-to-end planning that involves no shortcuts is the key to successful cloud migration. This is because some applications and data might be difficult to migrate and a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution does not exist. It is necessary for the organizations to identify their assets in the roadmap and strategy and divide the whole migration strategy into different stages to make the migration process seamless.
To conclude, cloud migration is inevitable for modern organizations and it can be challenging without a fail-proof strategy. The aforementioned cloud migration challenges and solutions will help you select the right CSP. Cloud experts at Blazeclan can further facilitate your migration to the cloud.
