What are the Common Cloud Migration Challenges and How to Overcome Them
One of the dynamic and most demanded technologies in recent years is the cloud. The global growth of cloud computing is increasing at a rapid pace. The cloud offers ample benefits, including flexibility, scalability, and cost efficiency. Though the cloud has transformed business models, and reaped huge benefits, many businesses are yet to realize cloud’s full potential. This is because Cloud Migration Services has significant challenges and for most of the companies, the question is not of it, but of how.
Uncertainty about data security, resistance to change, and cloud costs are all the major challenges. While it may sound daunting at first, as the cloud is an equation with many possibilities, the right Cloud management services provider will provide the right path to ensure a seamless and smooth migration transition. Kryptos understands the customer’s perspective and takes appropriate measures to properly plan, manage, and deliver every step of cloud migration with expert consulting, which results in improving data processing efficiency, optimizing cloud costs, and strengthening security.
In this blog, let’s discuss the top challenges so that the company can prepare for the big move.
Key Cloud Migration Challenges Due to Exceeded Budgets/Schedule:
While deploying the new cloud environment, the clients should overcome the hurdles in shifting workloads and points should be addressed which are not fully optimized. Some of the key challenges faced most often are as follows:
Exceeding the budget and schedule is one of the most common challenges faced during cloud migration. This can happen due to many factors and some of the key reasons are,
- Scope Creep and Complexity:
The traditional on-premises environment is not as complex as the cloud environment due to certain factors. Migrating data and moving the business application can get overwhelming by the task complexity and sheer scope. These migrating data and applications have been there for decades in their on-premises environment. This results in exceeded schedules as more and more features are added to the project and the cycle of work would get extended. More resources and time may be needed than planned, leading to overspending and project delays. - Lack of Skills and Poor Project Planning
Cloud Migration Services providers should be rightly chosen as without a detailed and clear migration strategy, businesses suffer from the cloud migration process. Without proper experience and skills, mistakes are prone to happen which would lead to increased costs due to prolonged downtime. Careful preparation and proper execution are required as cloud migration is a complex process and to avoid problems such as budget overruns and delay schedules. - Compliance and Data Security Issues
Several security protocols should be followed when migrating data to the cloud, to keep the sensitive information safe. Proper attention should be given to the security of the data, particularly when the data are stored off-site (even when the data are in a private cloud environment than a public cloud), where the data can be vulnerable to any cyber-attack. Data that has confidential information should be protected.
The robust security plan should be prepared meticulously by the cloud management services provider with utmost care before the migration process to prevent data theft or loss. Additionally, businesses should adhere to compliance regulations related to security and data privacy. - Lack of Cloud Environment Knowledge
On-premises is a very different environment from the cloud, so the cloud service provider should have firm knowledge before planning for the migration process. A lack of proper understanding will eventually result in costly mistakes, which would lead to exceeded budgets, schedules, and more. Cloud architecture used should be properly studied, such as private cloud, public cloud, multi-cloud or hybrid cloud as well as to confirm the same properly. Performance issues occur due to a lack of knowledge and inefficient cloud resource usage.
Key Cloud Migration Process Challenges
- State of Legacy Infrastructure and the types of workloads
Legacy application migration can be tricky, especially if the applications are too complex or not compatible with cloud services. In addition, the process can get complicated due to cloud infrastructure issues – applications that require changes to operate on the cloud or that are too old for easy migration. - Time required to finalize the migration process
Cloud adoption duration depends upon several factors, including the data type being migrated and the legacy applications’ complexity. Any delays could eventually result in downtime and unexpected costs; therefore, a proper contingency plan is essential for the migration strategy. - Cloud Migration Costs
The Cloud Migration journey is hard to predict and can be expensive, and thus exceeding the projected cost is not uncommon. For a successful cloud migration, understanding the required cost is essential, and the cloud migration services should have knowledge about the cloud environment and a phased approach with a set of milestones will help in reducing overspending.
How to Overcome Cloud Migration Challenges?
A detailed cloud migration strategy should be derived by the cloud management services company in advance. Detailed strategies and fallback mitigation plans should be in place to minimize any unrequired additional costs or delays. The cloud migration challenges can be handled by the following,
1. Migrating Data Types and Existing Infrastructure
The cloud migration services experts should access the workloads that require migration, including their data types and structure. For the assessment, it is critical to deeply understand the potential risks as well as legacy cloud infrastructure’s current state, prior to migration.
2. Reducing Migration Process Duration
The projects can be proceeded in a phased manner by adopting an ‘incremental’ approach, which shortens the time required to complete cloud migration, which is to focus on key important tasks and then move to less critical tasks later.
3. To prevent overspending
Organizations need to evaluate the costs of cloud migration before choosing the right Cloud Migration Services provider so that the allocation of resources can be better. Also, the inclusion of costs such as increased prices, margin of error, or unexpected costs should be taken into account.
4. Preparation of Cloud Migration Strategy
For a successful Cloud adoption, the organization should create a detailed plan and discuss the same with the cloud vendor. This will also develop their skillsets and align with the cloud migration project better. The strategies should sync with options provided by the cloud management services provider, external resources, and system integrators.
5. Assigning Responsibility
It is very critical to choose the right personnel to manage the project as well as equip them with the required information and tools for successful cloud migration. This also includes that all the employees are informed about the best practices and cloud security procedures.
6. Continuous Uptime
An alternative or fallback strategy should be planned if something goes wrong. A backup plan with detailed contingencies would help the organization during unexpected downtime periods.
7. Data Replication
Storage devices used for backup must be secure and reliable, and also to ensure data replication should be tested before production. Recovery solutions and reliable backups are essential to keep data safe during the cloud migration process.
Despite the various challenges with cloud migration discussed above, the key to the successful adoption of cloud depends upon the right selection of cloud service provider. With more than 15 years in the industry, Kryptos has successfully migrated many cloud projects with greater scalability, seamless migration, cost savings, faster time-to-market, and improved efficiency for new cloud services.
Additionally, Kryptos access to various cloud technology and powerful dynamic tools that on-premises, traditional IT environments cannot offer. With experienced cloud experts, an understanding of each migration challenge is possible, and addressing it with the right solution will make the process as smooth as possible, which ultimately gains organizations’ confidence. With Kryptos due diligence, the right team in place, and proper planning, businesses can achieve successful navigation though many cloud migration challenges occur. Therefore, a comprehensive cloud strategy that meets the business objectives, and addresses the organization’s specific goals with desired cloud service provider will ensure their cloud migration is a success.