5 Concerns While Moving to the Cloud – and How to Mitigate Them

Why are organizations moving to the cloud?

To stay competitive in an increasingly crowded market, organizations across the world are looking to migrate to the cloud.

Be it small, medium or large business, cloud providers offer a wide range of solutions meeting requirements of all the sizes of business. While cloud computing brings with it a host of benefits such as scalability, lower up-front costs, flexibility, etc., many companies raise concerns about security, risk and compliance.

So it is important to tackle these issues before launching into the migration process or signing up with a service provider. Here are some common concerns for businesses and what you can do to mitigate them –

Will your data be secure and what are the risks?

The increasing number of data breaches has made security the topmost concern for most businesses. The main problem is that most organizations are unaware of the storage location of their data or the legal and compliance regulations about their use and distribution.

How can you combat this?

• Understand what data you need to migrate or store on the cloud. We suggest beginning your cloud migration with non-critical application data, such as office applications.
• Consult with your service provider to ensure that the data you choose to migrate does not leave the country (in case of legal jurisdiction)
• Additionally, if your data is residing in private or community cloud infrastructure, the provider can assure you of the data security and protection.

Should you use different services offered by multiple providers? How can you leverage them for maximum benefit?

One of the first things to keep in mind is that you need to understand the objective of your company – what exactly are you hoping that this cloud migration will achieve?

The way to get a well-rounded perspective on this point is to consult various cloud specialists as well as the key users in your organization. Develop a short and long-term plan detailing what you intend to achieve, and how various providers can help. Then, evaluate whether your organization will benefit from multi-cloud or single-cloud strategy.

How do organizations ensure moving to the cloud makes commercial sense?

It is usual for organizations to compare cloud with traditional models, to look for the commercial justification to their management. While making the comparison, keep the following points in mind:

• Cost (Compare up-front and operational costs between the two models).
• Benefits (Such as agility, scalability, flexibility).
• Risks associated with each model and how it will be approached in both scenarios.

How do organizations avoid getting locked in with a particular supplier/vendor?

One of the major concerns faced by businesses is they get locked in with a particular vendor and not able to call-off the contract in between Vendor-lock it makes you dependent on the products and services of a particular provider and makes you unable to switch to another vendor without incurring substantial switching costs. Lock-in can be avoided by ensuring the following:

Negotiate both an entry and exit plan prior with your vendor

Sign your contract after reading all the elements with your vendor. Do not hesitate to speak about a transparent entry and exit plan. Ensure that vendor should assist you with deconversion if you want to migrate to another vendor.

Watch contracts for auto-renewal

Many IT vendors auto-renew contracts for a new term unless you notify them that you don’t want to continue a contract. This happens when no one keeps an eye on vendor contracts. To avoid this problem, monitor contractual commitments and when terms come to an end.

Maximize Data Portability

Data is one of the biggest sticking points in cloud migrations, as different formats and models can cause portability issues. The Open Data Element Framework was created to help standardize the documentation, categorization, and indexing of data, and the Cloud Data Management Interface helps define how to create, retrieve, update and delete data elements from the cloud. This is essential to avoid being stuck within the vendor’s framework.

Will organizations have limited cloud knowledge and skills?

Lack of knowledgeable staff can result in resistance to the move to the cloud, especially within the teams used to working with a traditional IT model. The IT team should be trained by the cloud professionals on how the technology works, innovations, risks associated with it and how to resolve them.

This inertia can easily be overcome by following certain points,

Educate IT and other core teams that will be affected by the cloud migration

If you want a successful migration to the cloud, you should ensure that your team is well-equipped to deal with any challenge. Identify the key skills you would require to work with the cloud. Prepare a training curriculum to educate the IT team. Training and investing in the core team upskilling to get them well versed with the concepts, terminology and functioning of cloud applications.

Revamp IT leader skills to align with the cloud

Cloud computing is in high demand today and almost every organization is transitioning towards it. It’s significant to bring in the change in IT leadership if you’re switching to the cloud. So that the employees can be trained and made them future-ready for a smooth shift to the cloud.

In conclusion, these are five ways to mitigate the most common concerns while considering a move to the cloud.

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