In the era of digital transformation, businesses are grappling to exploit every opportunity that comes their way. One such measure that many businesses are taking is to switch to the cloud to stay agile, cut costs, and future-proof their growth. In fact, in a statistic released by Gartner, more than 30% of the new software investments are bound to shift to cloud-only. With cloud migration becoming the norm, the urgency of solving the associated problems is intensifying.
Some the challenges of cloud migration include data loss, cyber-attacks, data center closures, and tricky regulatory compliances. However, these challenges should not be a cause of discouragement for organizations seeking to leverage the benefits of the cloud. Whilst cloud migration indeed has the reputation of being tedious, second only to cloud security, meticulous planning and expertise can ease the process. On these lines, we will first look at the different challenges that an organization may face while migrating to the cloud. Post this, we present to you the key solutions that address those challenges effectively. The objective of this case study is to display solutions to cloud migration challenges that will minimize the risk and maximize the benefits of migrating to the cloud.
Cloud Migration Challenges Faced by Organizations
As companies are increasingly shifting to the cloud, cloud computing has exploded over the past decade and the number of cloud providers and solutions continue to increase. However, before an enterprise makes the jump, a strategy for migrating to the cloud must be developed. The strategy must include how to overcome the challenges associated with cloud migration. The following are certain common challenges faced by companies during cloud migration. Here is a list of challenges and solutions faced in the industry.
1.Data Breaching & Compliance Risk
One of the most talked about challenges of cloud migration are data breaching and compliance risks.
Solution:
During the migration process, one must ensure that they pass the data through a secured path. You can add encryption to the data and ensure that your company follows the industry compliance standards.
2. Narrow Analysis of Migration Cost
If you fail to analyse the cost of cloud computing strategy, the migration process will end up taking your expenses that are meant for other business activities. The cloud server also generates a huge bill at the month’s end.
Solution:
Evaluation is key to saving 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 based on their business requirements and budget.
3. Post Migration Issues Leads to Poor Performance
There are times when we have challenges after cloud migration.Legacy systems feature numerous components that are hosted on multiple servers. It could lead to on-demand computing solutions that come with several storage options and services.
Solution:
This could be handled with planning on the cloud capacity. It will measure and analyse the performance of your applications against predictive demand. This approach would help you to recruit and have the right resources needed to meet the demands.
4.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.
Solution:
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 stopping using their services.
5. 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.
Solution:
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.
The Benefits of Cloud Migration Outweigh Its Challenges
- Cloud migration is a very popular business strategy, and it is because businesses have understood the benefits that it offers at such a low cost. Let’s check out the key benefits of migrating your data to the cloud.
- It offers scalability as it gives opportunity to find the right individual depending on the demands.
- The whole process is cost-effective. Having a local server provides you with ongoing maintenance and support. Also, on-site staff comes with zero price for managing your systems. There is no requirement for purchasing systems and equipment.
- There is an option of remote collaboration as the cloud environment could be accessed remotely. By utilizing the tools of collaboration and communication, software and applications, the experts can access cloud-based documents and databases from anywhere. This provides the experts the ability to collaborate much effectively. Since sending files from one area to another takes a huge amount of time, cloud computing reduces the time and labor involved in file sharing.
- There are several cloud solutions which give you high-security data storage at minimal cost.
- You can get your data recovered as it also offers cloud-based backup and recovery solutions. This helps in saving your time and money for recovery operations. For small scale companies, this is the most ideal option to choose.
Final Note
Cloud migration may sound like a challenging and time and resource-consuming task; however, it is an inevitable part of growth for enterprises. The most important asset for the organization in this phase is to have a clear and well-defined cloud migration strategy. Having an experienced cloud service provider may be helpful. The easiest way to overcome these challenges is to migrate under the guidance of sector experts. A Distributed Cloud Experts at AIT Global India can facilitate your migration to the cloud and provide innovative solutions for the cloud migration challenges and help you select the right CSP.