6 common challenges when migrating to the cloud

Cloud computing is everywhere and already an integral part of most companies’ IT strategies. Enterprises globally are grasping the advantages offered by cloud computing as it provides efficient, cost-effective and easy-to-implement solutions alongside the freedom to scale-- dependent only on customer demand. What’s more, the cloud drives higher productivity at lower costs. This means efficiency is baked into multiple aspects of the cloud computing model. This doesn’t mean that migration is perfect by any means--or without issues. While helping migrate our global clients over the past years, we’ve honed many best practices so decided to share our lessons learned here. Want to save time and money? Read on, Builders.

#1 Reviewing your apps before migration

One mistake we’ve seen our customers do is failing to analyze their applications before moving to the cloud. Sometimes businesses try to do too much too soon. Our recommendation? The best first step is to analyze which of your current applications are suitable for that first migration. For example, divide your businesses’ applications into two groups--those apps that will be migrated and those that will be replaced by other applications. Another area to review is how compliant must the existing applications be. It does make sense to migrate the applications that require compliance because one responsibility of the cloud provider is to keep the apps running in full compliance.

#2 Having redundancies in place

An application whose workloads tend to oscillate regularly are good candidates for migration to the cloud. For example, are there significant peaks at different times of day? Are you expecting thousands of customers all at once? If you want to ensure your site stays up, test how to restore data from the cloud. An onsite restore can be as simple as pressing a button. If you are restoring from the cloud, just know that the cloud service has to locate the data in order to restore it. Sometimes that can take hours. So when you test, make sure you test 100% of the proposed process.

#3 Failing to do a proper business analysis first

If a business doesn’t do a proper analysis then it won’t be able to determine what the benefit is and if it was achieved. For example, which migration tool is best for your migration? All tools are not alike and you need to determine which ones to use. Another example is to determine how much resources a specific app needs. In that way, you can dictate just how much capacity you will need and not overpay.On a related note, some companies that migrate to the cloud do a lousy job estimating the true cost of service. When considering starting a migration to the cloud, start with the on-premises services that you use the least. By eliminating those, you can see immediately where you can start reducing costs.

#4 Resolving resistance to the move

One of the biggest hurdles we’ve seen in migrating to the cloud is the professionals within organizations. People do resist change even if they know it’s positive. Migrating to the cloud is guaranteed to bring a lot of changes; new systems, processes, and often, new leadership. How can you resolve this dilemma? First and foremost, we recommend gaining support from management. Without that, the process may fail.Management must be aware of the needs and objectives to migrate. Then, they need to communicate those key points within the organization. Usually, if people understand why something is being changed, they will be more receptive to it. Support for the migration at all levels will help ensure a successful rate of continued adoption.A business must invest time and money into training, which is sometimes inadequate or lacking entirely. If not properly trained, employees will likely retain their old processes or find a workaround to the new processes.

#5 Shoring up a shortage of skills (hint: we can help!)

One issue in migrating to the cloud is finding people who have the skills to manage an effective migration. Because of the demand for such skills, it may be difficult for a company to locate the proper people. Luckily, when using Builder Cloud, you gain a network of 75,000 technical resources globally to help you implement your cloud needs--no matter the time zone. You may still want to evolve cloud skills internally as your current IT staff is already familiar with existing systems. Training your staff in the cloud service processes can still be a good investment of time and money. This can include continuous training and aligned with your business goals as well as to the roles of the individual staff member.

#6 Understanding and mitigating for downtime

Please be aware that any migration involves a certain amount of downtime. Luckily, Builder Cloud uses AI to minimize your downtime. To continue to reduce your downtime, ensure you have a verified backup. Downtime is probably one of the most crucial and common issues during cloud migration. If possible, we’ve seen success with setting up a backup environment or dedicating resources to run applications until the migration is complete.Cloud migration is a big, complex goal for any company no matter what its size. While this endeavor brings many unique challenges, the issues presented aren’t impossible to overcome, especially when using Builder Cloud, your trusted cloud management tool.

From what we’ve seen, the key is to recognize those potential risks and obstacles in the beginning and create a plan to manage them. With careful planning and evaluation, you can navigate the complexities of the cloud and reap the benefits of cloud-based IT operations. Our human-assisted AI works in the background to buy forward capacity from partners including Amazon Web Services to ensure that we can provide you with capacity exactly when you need it, and at the best price possible.

We are the largest AWS partners in India and help move your infrastructure in a way that optimises costs. What's more: Our prepaid AWS cloud vastly improves monitoring for enterprises, allowing for controlled spending and fixed budgets, automated tracking, local currency support, with all information displayed in real time on an easy-to-use dashboard. Are you thinking about your next migration? We’re here to help with your cloud needs right here!