​5 Mistakes to Avoid When Migrating to The Cloud

Mistakes in business aren’t only time-consuming, they can also be very expensive. Depending on the severity of the overlook, it can also be a massive impediment in the face of moving forward. With anything tech-related this can be true, but it is particularly relevant when it comes to migrating to the cloud.

Business executives can be weary or downright dismissive of large-scale cloud migrations due to missteps or even stop trusting their most senior IT professionals. Cloud migration is a whole new strategy that impacts the way businesses need to think about and handle data storage, resource allocation and development among other things. The way businesses are run in the cloud is different and changes need to be made in required skills, processes and the way professionals work.

Here are the 5 most common mistakes to avoid:

1.Forgetting Business Analysis

Bypassing or forgetting business analysis before diving head first into a cloud migration is a big mistake. When there’s no thought out business case, organisations don’t know what the actual benefits of a migration would be. Will it save the organisation money? Why are you doing it?

The most important questions to ask and find the answers to are:

• Which migration tools are best for you?
• What is your main goal, do you want apps to run faster or cheaper?
• How can you optimize your apps to run faster/cheaper?

What you need to keep in mind as a business, is that the cloud is not a strategy in itself, it’s more of a tactic toward your business strategy and objectives. You need to make sure that executives in your business also understand the benefits. Rather than assuming they’re aware of the positive aspects make sure you explain it to them.

2.Not Analyzing Apps Before Migration

Don’t try to do too much when you’re migrating to the cloud. Keep things minimal at first, with a reduced number of applications. To analyse your portfolio of apps, split them into two groups: the ones you’re going to replace and the ones you’re going to replace.

For example, it wouldn’t make sense to migrate an email application that’s on-site when you could start using a cloud-based one like Office 365.

Companies have failed previously for failing to test their move completely. It’s one thing testing how data will be migrated, but it also needs to be coupled with finding out how it reacts when it needs restoration. Remember to test the whole process thoroughly so as not to be left in the lurch when something comes up.

3. Train Up

When it comes to knowledge of cloud migration, not a lot of your IT staff will know much about it and bringing new cloud-specific staff on-board can drive your costs up. However, if you decide to stick with the staff you already have, lack of knowledge can mean that your project will run longer than expected.

What you can do is to train your IT professionals. They need to understand how it works and how to modernize applications. This will allow your business to take advantage of cloud services to its full extent.

4. Downplaying Costs

The cloud comes with great cost savings, which is one of the main attractive points of migrating. Organisations no longer have to pay IT professionals to deal with expensive data centers, purchase as much hardware, etc. However, some underestimate the cost of a cloud migration.

IT managers need to consider the cost of moving storage and data, which is the most costly aspect of a migration. It’s more of a people cost than anything, as they need to estimate and consider how long it will take to migrate data. Another thing to consider is that employees will be distracted doing other tasks during a migration and projects may be postponed due to it. Staff used doing certain tasks prior to the cloud now need to be reallocated to other departments or job roles.

However, once it’s done employees will have been freed of having to do mundane tasks and will be able to focus on more relevant and productive ones.

4. Legacy thinking

This area stems from training and your staff needs to shift from legacy thinking. All thinking processes need to be changed as the cloud isn’t simply picking up an application and dropping it in. The most important benefit to enterprises is taking advantage of its services like mobile back-end services and performance management services. It’s not all about cheap storage!

What it comes down to is re-thinking strategies that have been used for the past couple of decades.

Moving beyond legacy thinking will help IT managers avoid a major pitfall of cloud migrations.

All in all, it’s highly unlikely that businesses will avoid every mistake when it comes to the cloud. These 5 key points should be kept in mind however as the biggest ones can be sidestepped.

Have we missed anything relating to migrating to the cloud? Let us know in the comments!

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