Cloud migration can lead to greater cost efficiencies, improved service levels and faster time to market for products. However, just because an enterprise can achieve these improvements doesn’t mean it will. Mike Rulf, CTO of Americas, Syntax, shares the most common reasons why cloud migrations fail and best practices enterprises can apply to succeed in their cloud goals for the future.
According to research from Accenture, nearly two-thirds of organizationsOpens a new window (63%) that invest in the cloud don’t achieve the value they expect. To ensure your cloud migration is successful, you need to go into it with a plan.Â
Fortunately for your enterprise, cloud technology has been through countless iterations of trial-and-error over the last decade. There’s a lot to learn from the success and failure of these projects. By avoiding what caused others to fail and following a few tried-and-true best practices, you can set your organization up to reap the full benefits of the cloud.
Why Do Cloud Migrations Fail?
The road to achieving transformational benefits in the cloud is long and winding. Cloud adoption and management requires new IT strategies, tools, skills and processes, and that is often why so many organizations fail to get migration right.Â
To ensure your cloud adoption is successful, it’s critical to understand what not to do. The following are three of the most common roadblocks to unlocking the cloud’s value:
1. Lack of infrastructure planning: Leaders frequently underestimate the amount of planning that goes into a successful cloud migration. They often think migration is as simple as dragging existing applications from in-house servers and dropping them into the cloud. But inadequate plans lead to subpar results – 74% of companies Opens a new window have had to move their cloud-based apps back on-premises after failing to achieve anticipated benefits.
Many existing apps will have to be adapted or rebuilt to operate optimally on the cloud. It’s crucial to thoroughly evaluate one’s current infrastructure and governance policies in advance, then create a step-by-step plan for migrating each application. When migration decisions are made on the fly rather than ahead of time, it causes time delays, added expenses and suboptimal decision making.Â
2. Lack of skills: The cloud can be transformative, but even best-of-breed technology won’t move the needle on business outcomes without the right people and skills in place. In fact, 42% of organizationsOpens a new window cite a lack of skills as a major barrier to achieving the full benefits of the cloud.Â
Many enterprises erroneously believe they’ll manage their cloud with the skills they used to manage their legacy IT models. But the static, monolithic management requirements of on-premises solutions don’t work for the cloud’s operating model, a highly distributed, dynamic environment. IT teams need the appropriate skills, like experience working with multiple providers, to manage cloud platforms and the accompanying technology like containers, microservices, APIs, SaaS systems, and more.
3. Misalignment: Migrating to the cloud requires a significant investment of time and resources. So, friction is likely to follow when an organization’s people aren’t in agreement about the migration’s goals and its impact on the business. While ensuring everyone is on the same page may seem like an obvious step, 40% of failed cloud migrationsOpens a new window are due to organizational misalignment.Â
Invest in education and alignment for the following three stakeholders: the IT team, company leadership, and all departments. For IT, without defined goals, responsibilities and regular touchpoints, technical teams could experience misalignment on the problems and solutions. All executives and board members must be aware of the potential costs, benefits and steps involved. Otherwise, IT risks not getting the support they need. And finally, in the end, all employees will be affected by the migration, so keeping end-users up to date on progress and helping them adapt to the changes will ensure company-wide buy-in.
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Setting Your Cloud Investment Up for SuccessÂ
Now that you’re aware of the most common reasons cloud migrations are unsuccessful, you can start developing your roadmap. These three best practices will help you make the most of your cloud investment.
Step 1: Identify the benefits
Before choosing a vendor or starting implementation, ask yourself and your key stakeholders: ​​What benefits do we most care about? What improvements do we want to achieve compared to our current infrastructure?Â
While the cloud offers a host of potential benefits – from cost savings to improved collaboration – nothing is assured, and the wrong decisions could easily result in an adverse outcome. For example, let’s say your servers are dying, and your goal is cost savings. While AWS minute-to-minute pricing can be optimal in certain situations, this setup and pricing model will likely cost you more money, not less. It’s essential to be intentional about what you want to achieve, rather than merely hoping benefits will follow.Â
Step 2: Test regularly and measure progress
Before starting implementation, be sure to measure key performance indicators, like page load time, CPU usage, and memory used percentage. These KPIs should be tied in some way to the benefits you want to achieve. Then you’ll be able to assess the progress you’ve made and adjust along the way. You’ll also want to find the right technology and tools to help you measure success.
Additionally, test your solutions at each stage of the migration plan to address any potential issues. The earlier and more frequently you test for potential problems, the smoother migration will go, and the more likely you will be to achieve the intended benefits.
Step 3: Find the right partners
The right partners will ensure your cloud journey is a success and your solution can meet your organization’s current and future needs. Consider a technology consultancy or professional services company that can support you in planning, building, migrating, running and optimizing your cloud solution.
Be sure to choose a partner with expertise in your industry and experience with private, public, hybrid, or multi-cloud environments. You should also evaluate whether they’ve received any awards, their compliance and certification status, and their technology partnerships. Even better: See if your potential partner offers a proof of concept cloud environment, which allows you to test-drive your operations on the cloud.
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A Cloud Success Story
Let’s look at a case study demonstrating a successful cloud transformation in action. One of the largest preschool and toddler toys manufacturers in the U.S. realized they needed support scaling in the cloud to serve customers better and continue growing when its eCommerce transactions started to exceed those from brick-and-mortar retail. Â
They needed to scale up their systems to accommodate the new workload better and improve eCommerce capabilities. The system needed to process thousands of single-unit orders every day and scale during especially high-traffic shopping periods to accommodate online shopping. They also needed to ensure that their current manufacturing and shipping processes ran without interruption during the transformation.Â
The planning and implementation process, which typically takes 3-6 months, was started considering the broader goals and the need to ensure complete alignment with its stakeholders. They experienced immediate performance gains such as improved system uptime and the elimination of unplanned outages. When transaction volume skyrocketed 700% during the holiday season, virtualization was used to scale up the organizational environment and meet customer demand.Â
With a successful cloud transformation under its belt, they can now focus on innovation rather than infrastructure maintenance. Additionally, they’ve also implemented management systems to help improve cost transparency and provide visibility into per-item and per-customer profitability.Â
Invest In the Future
Migration to the cloud is a matter of when – not if. Becoming cloud-first is a key enabler for other digital transformation initiatives and modern business operations. But unlocking the cloud’s potential is far from guaranteed.Â
An effective migration requires more than simply having the proper technology. By undertaking your cloud journey with thorough planning, transparent communication, the right people and the right partners, you’ll be positioned to get the most out of your investment and set your organization up for success.Â
What cloud migration strategies are you employing to help your systems, processes and people succeed? Share with us on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to learn from you!