If you haven’t yet migrated to the cloud, you’re likely exploring how to make the transition. For many organizations aiming to scale and grow, moving to the cloud is an inevitable step. However, the process can be more challenging than anticipated. Addressing potential barriers and steering clear of common pitfalls early on can mean the difference between a smooth, successful migration and a problematic one.
Addressing Cloud Migration Barriers Upfront
Barrier #1: Lack of education and awareness
Although cloud migration is a widely discussed topic, its full scope is often misunderstood. Many see it simply as shifting infrastructure responsibilities to reduce internal IT costs, but a closer examination reveals a complex landscape with various types of cloud computing and migration options, each with its own intricacies and details.
Although most large and medium-sized organizations, IT teams, boards, and executives understand the basics of cloud migration, achieving success requires a deeper level of understanding.
Whether you adopt Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), opt to shut down applications and put apps in the cloud through Software as a Service (SaaS), or move to managed security services, they all require different levels of understanding and demand a varied approach to aligning stakeholders.
The more you understand cloud migration, the better equipped you’ll be to address why you want to migrate and to infer how you’re best going to do it.
Barrier #2: Lack of understanding in critical areas
Cost and migration options are two areas where initial lack of understanding can create initial barriers.
- Cost: Shifting from on-prem operational expenses to cloud, consumption- and utilization-based pricing requires an organizational shift in how costs are estimated, measured, and charged. While it can result in long-term cost savings, educating stakeholders initially can be challenging
- Cloud migration options: Understanding the options can be challenging for two reasons:
- While in the midst of migrating to the cloud, organizations typically must adopt new technology that comes with a learning curve.
- These are technical concepts that have to be communicated at a non-tech level to key stakeholders.
Barrier #3: Perceiving cloud migration as just another cost
It’s no secret that upfront costs to cloud migration can be substantial, and this can create difficulties when getting key decision-makers onboard. However, any pushback or hesitance directly related to cost is frequently due to a lack of understanding on the scale and magnitude of cloud migration.
As the old saying goes, you must “spend money to save money.” Decision-makers need to view any upfront costs as a long-term investment, for the money you spend now will help you save money in the long run.
The most effective way to communicate this is to break it down into how it will benefit different areas of the business, highlighting how and where improvements will happen.
For example, migrating infrastructure to the cloud eliminates the need to rent or lease physical datacenter space, significantly reducing operational costs, including the high energy expenses associated with on-premises facilities.
There are two primary resources to leverage to overcome cloud migration challenges:
- Industry analysts and reports, such as those from Gartner and Forrester, can provide guidance on data points needed to communicate these improvements. These analyst firms are uniquely positioned to capture a broad market perspective that is representative of what most customers are doing from a cloud transformation standpoint.
- Best practice documentation from cloud providers (Azure, AWS, GDP) are particularly helpful because their extensive experience with thousands of customers has allowed them to develop proven best practices, taking an approach that is based on what you want to do (use-case perspective) and why you want to do it (focus on desired end-state).
These resources break down cloud migration factors, guiding you through the process step by step and helping you ask the right questions along the way.
Once you’ve overcome the main barriers, it’s important to avoid the most common mistakes when selecting a migration strategy.
Anticipating & Mitigating Common Mistakes
Mistake #1: Assuming a lift-and-shift approach is easiest and quickest
A common misconception is that rehosting (aka lift and shift) is simply copying and pasting infrastructure from one place to another, such as to a shared location or cloud infrastructure. Equally, it’s assumed that following this approach will make cloud migration easy — but this is simply not true.
The complexity of cloud migration stems from the actual process of moving systems, often referred to as “lift and shift.” In an on-premises environment, you benefit from direct network connectivity, whereas in the cloud, the infrastructure relies on wireless connections. This shift introduces dependencies on networks like WANs, which serve as the gateway to your systems. Previously, when everything was local, identifying the root cause of issues was more straightforward. In a cloud environment, troubleshooting becomes more complex. During migration, additional factors come into play, increasing the potential for errors — something often overlooked.
Mistake #2: Focusing on existing problems instead of improvements
Organizations should look at cloud migration as an opportunity to fix problems, identify gaps, and address key issues.
For example, let’s assume you are moving an internet-exposed server with vulnerabilities that is sitting behind a firewall. If you take a literal lift-and-shift approach and move that server to the cloud, all you’ve done is expose the same vulnerability.
Instead, take advantage of the unique opportunity you’re given with your cloud migration strategy to:
- Reflect on the current state-of-play
- Improve and/or add efficiencies
- Put your infrastructure in a state that is far better than where it was on-prem
Mistake #3: Missing an opportunity to consolidate
Traditionally, on-premises hosting required large servers that occupied significant physical space. This meant carefully planning the placement of components, which often restricted how operations were managed. In contrast, moving to the cloud allows for scalable computing power without the same physical limitations, although cost remains a consideration
Transitioning to the cloud offers a great opportunity to streamline your infrastructure. For instance, if you’re currently managing a large number of file storage servers or multiple applications requiring load balancing, you may find that not all of them are necessary in the cloud. By optimizing your applications and improving redundancy, you can achieve greater efficiency without maintaining as much hardware.
Use your migration strategy as an opportunity to identify where you can consolidate and minimize what you have. This ultimately will support the idea that moving to the cloud is cheaper in the long run. In the cloud, less is more.
