Companies make a significant decision when they commit to migrating some or all of their IT environment to the cloud. Organizations may want to modernize legacy infrastructure, leverage new technologies, reduce costs, or increase flexibility. They have typically evaluated their existing environment and concluded that the cloud offers benefits and opportunities that can’t be ignored.
However, cloud migration is more complex than simply deciding to move your computers and applications to a new home. A successful migration depends on adopting a methodical approach and coordinating many moving parts. Organizations can make multiple mistakes or oversights, leading to an unsuccessful migration that fails to deliver the expected benefits.
Businesses considering embarking on a cloud migration are more likely to succeed by avoiding the following missteps during planning and execution.
Lacking a Clear Migration Strategy
One of the most impactful mistakes an organization can make is failing to develop a clear cloud migration strategy. A company that begins a cloud migration without a well-defined strategy is setting itself up for a challenging endeavour that may, in the end, hurt the business more than it helps it. Teams may neglect to operate with a clear strategy due to pressure to move fast to remain competitive or keep up with current trends. Companies migrating without a plan are destined to face cost overruns, failed projects, and a cloud architecture that fails to address business objectives effectively.
Decision-makers can dramatically increase the chances of a successful cloud migration and avoid costly, business-impacting mistakes by adopting a migration strategy that encompasses the following elements.
- Business reasons for the migration: Companies should have clear business objectives, such as reducing costs, supporting mobile workers, improving performance, enhancing cybersecurity, increasing scalability, and gaining access to advanced technologies.
- What to migrate: Businesses must choose which part of their environment to migrate. They may decide to migrate entirely to the cloud or only move specific applications and workloads.
- Where to migrate: Organizations must choose a cloud provider, or multiple providers, that address their reasons for the migration and can handle the elements they want to move.
- How to migrate: The company should select a migration method that aligns with business objectives and minimizes operational disruptions.
Choosing the Wrong Migration Method
A crucial part of a company’s migration strategy is selecting a migration method that meets business requirements and goals. Many organizations make the mistake of choosing the fastest technique, which is to rehost, or lift-and-shift their legacy environment to the cloud without redesigning any systems or workflows. This method often results in higher costs, instability, inefficiency, and minimizes the migration’s potential benefits.
While rehosting may be the right choice for some companies, organizations should consider alternative migration methods that offer advantages not available with the lift-and-shift approach.
- Replatforming: This method makes minor changes to systems and applications to make more effective use of the cloud, balancing migration speed and infrastructure modernization.. Examples include adopting a managed database service or implementing cloud-optimized operating systems.
- Refactoring or re-architecting: In this technique, teams make significant modifications to applications and workloads to leverage cloud-native capabilities. The refactoring may take the form of breaking an extensive application into microservices or implementing serverless application solutions. Refactoring is expensive, requires deep skills, and can be time-consuming.
- Repurchase: Companies may choose to migrate from licensed software products to cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions. An example of repurchasing is replacing an on-premises Microsoft Exchange environment with Microsoft 365. This method is a fast way for companies to modernize, but it may involve retraining and complex data migration procedures.
- Retire or retain: An organization may decide that it does not need to migrate all its legacy systems. Teams may identify redundant applications that can be retired. Some systems that are not suitable for cloud migration may be retained to support business activities.
Not Addressing Skill Gaps
Decision-makers may not fully understand the different skills necessary to optimize a cloud environment. Teams familiar with supporting on-premises, legacy systems may not have the knowledge required to manage a virtualized cloud environment. A lack of skills can expose a company to excessive operational disruptions, delayed projects, and security vulnerabilities.
Organizations can address this issue with various tactics, including:
- Investing in training and cloud certifications for current employees;
- Choosing managed services rather than self-managed cloud resources;
- Partnering with a managed service provider (MSP) to fill the skill gaps.
Inefficient Data Migration Planning
Migration typically involves transferring data assets from on-premises systems to the cloud. Companies need to plan data transfers and validation to minimize business impacts. Poor planning can result in multiple problems that affect operational efficiency and customer service.
The following issues are likely when data migration is poorly planned.
- Systems can experience prolonged outages during data transfers, making the environment unusable.
- Data transfers can be incomplete or contain corrupted information.
- Companies may be subject to expensive data egress charges that can be avoided with a well-planned transfer.
Companies can minimize these problems by performing data migration during off-hours or keeping legacy systems functional until the process is complete. Teams should test all transferred data and applications in a sandbox environment before moving them into production.
Accepting Default Security Settings
Businesses must implement cybersecurity measures that address the intricacies of the cloud. Teams, especially those with limited experience with cloud resources, may be motivated to accept the provider’s default security settings. These defaults can lead to security vulnerabilities that put the business at risk.
Some of the security settings that need to be verified to align with company and regulatory policies include:
- Ensuring multi-factor authentication (MFA) is implemented to protect user credentials;
- Implementing end-to-end encryption to safeguard sensitive data from unauthorized entities;
- Confirming that all HIPAA and other compliance frameworks are in place.
Companies can mitigate these risks by engaging an experienced third-party to conduct a security assessment and identify areas for improvement.
Partner With VAST for a Smooth Cloud Migration
VAST has the experience, skills, and tools to help your company successfully migrate to the cloud. VAST View is our proprietary, comprehensive cloud migration and management platform. It covers all aspects of your migration, from assessment and planning the move to orchestration, which optimizes the new environment. We can supplement your team with cloud experts and evaluate your cybersecurity posture to identify vulnerabilities that are a risk to your business.
Call us today and get started on a smooth, successful cloud migration that modernizes your environment and meets your business objectives.
