Many businesses have started to realize the true potential of cloud computing, resulting in the increasing adoption of this technology. According to a recent Gartner report, the worldwide public cloud services market alone is projected to reach $331.2 billion by 2022. It also says that more than a third of organizations see cloud investments as a top-three investing priority, which is impacting market offerings.
Not just large organizations, but small and medium businesses are also moving their applications to the cloud. However, you shouldn’t rush the decision to move your business to the cloud. You need to prepare your staff and clients as well to embrace this transition. You also need to be aware of the challenges that you are likely to face during the migration.
Read on to know more about the common pitfalls when moving your medium-sized business to the cloud.
1. Lack of Thorough Planning
Jumping into cloud migration without a well-planned strategy can lead to severe consequences. As the business owner, you should have a clear idea of why you want to move your business to the cloud, know your current application portfolio in detail, and review your entire system before the migration begins. This will help you understand how to proceed with the migration.
You will need to decide the following:
- What to Retain: You may not have to change some of your applications or infrastructure. You can use them without moving them to the cloud for the time being.
- What to Move: These include in-cloud and on-site applications that you need to move to the new cloud platform. You may want to move these applications for agility, flexibility, performance, cost, and digital transformation, among others.
- What to Restructure: You will need to re-design or re-structure some of your business-critical applications when moving them to the cloud. However, this is a complicated process as it often involves redeveloping these applications.
What to Discard – Cloud migration may render some of your current infrastructure and applications useless. However, this decision has to be rational, not emotional. It can help you save money, time, and effort.
2. Failure to Keep Key Personnel Involved
To make your cloud migration successful, you need to keep your key personnel involved. Change can be scary for most people. So, you must try to understand how they feel about this transition and address their concerns, if any. It will help you to mitigate any potential disruptions before they escalate.
Plus, moving your business applications to the cloud will require you to redefine the roles of your staff and business partners. For example, as your cloud service provider will take care of regular IT maintenance, your in-house tech guys can focus on your core business activities. Similarly, other departments will also need to streamline their processes and organizational structure to make them compatible with cloud computing, which brings us to the next point.
3. Ignoring the Importance of Training
You may need to train your employees to fit into their new roles in a cloud-based work environment. You might also need to provide your business partners and clients with a heads up. For employees who don’t have any experience or cloud computing knowledge, taking on their new roles is not going to be easy.
Mishandling the cloud-based data or application may lead to legal and financial implications. This why training is important. If your in-house IT team has the knowledge and experience, they can provide the necessary training to your employees. Alternatively, you can ask your service provider to offer a crash course for your employees.
4. Not Paying Attention to Data Security
Moving your business applications to the cloud is essentially moving tons of your business data to the cloud. It involves transferring sensitive personal and business information such as passwords, logins, credit card details, and other financial information to the cloud. In other words, you need to pay attention to keeping your data secure during the transition, and after it gets moved to the cloud.
Of course, your cloud service provider will offer the best security measures possible. However, it is better if you get third-party reports on the security standards your service provider follows when making the transition.
While making sure your data stays secure, you might also want to avoid vendor lock-in. If the peculiar safety measures restrict you from changing service providers in the future, you should look for other alternatives. Make sure to understand how public and private cloud safety works before jumping in.
5. Underestimating the Migration Costs
Most medium-sized businesses tend to opt for cloud migration to save operating costs. Most cloud computing service providers will charge you a fixed amount once a month or follow a pay-as-you-go pricing model.
However, moving enterprise data and applications to the cloud is a complicated venture. Depending on the cloud you use, the size and nature of your business, and your service provider, you may have to pay for upfront costs, hidden charges, training, and additional support. For instance, a private cloud provider may require you to pay some upfront infrastructure costs.
You don’t want your project to get stuck halfway through the migration because you are out of money. So, you need to speak with your service provider and do some research of your own to get a clear idea of the migration costs.
Thankfully, cloud migration is not restricted by geographical boundaries. So, whether you need a cloud migration service, hiring a cost-effective service provider shouldn’t be a problem. Just makes sure you verify the credentials and experience of the said service provider before signing the contract.
Parting Words
Cloud computing is the future. However, getting carried away with the hype can lead to problems in the long run. Avoiding the above common pitfalls should help expedite your cloud migration process. Have you decided to move your medium-sized business to the cloud yet? When do you plan on doing it? Tell us about your cloud computing plans in the comments section. Your experience may help others.
