It is not surprising that with so much emphasis on Cloud technologies, the number of organizations opting for hybrid cloud solution will increase dramatically over the last one year. It was 19% in 2016 compared to 57% in 2017. However, this also indicates that there are a significant number of companies who still have not joined the cloud. Although cloud solutions are convenient and affordable, migrating to cloud involves a number of challenges like training, security and lag time. It is worth discussing how some of the companies who have migrated to cloud overcome these challenges.
- Provide necessary training for IT personnel
When the companies IT department is used to work on its own server for a long time then moving on to the cloud can become difficult without proper skills. Here getting help from a consultant from cloud providers is essential for the necessary training needed to make the transition to cloud services.
- A Deployment Strategy of integration and adoption is needed
Every company faces these key challenges while migrating to cloud. What is needed is a complete restructuring with a proper deployment mechanism in place, which includes not only the implementation of the software but also integrating various business processes with the software.
- The Skill gaps need to be addressed
Maybe the biggest challenges faced by any company when migrating to the cloud is the lacuna in required skill sets for operating cloud. The organizations should look to build the skills of their IT personnel in the areas of modern software architectures, virtualization tools, cloud security concepts, optimization patterns for metered services and auto-scaling techniques.
- Companies need to look into the speed and bandwidth of their Internet Connection
As soon as all the services are operated through the cloud, it is critical to maintaining the quality of the internet connection. The reliability, speed and bandwidth all will come into play when the organization is working on a single connected cloud-based server. The management needs to ensure that the internet connection works perfectly and at all time.
- Maintaining and managing Security is of utmost importance
Security is probably the important most component of a cloud management system. It is a difficult challenge to maintain the same amount of security in a cloud-based migration and the whole project needs to be managed meticulously and carefully. It is the compliance regarding stored and migrated data that required to be regulated properly and it is to be ensured that protocols are met in the situations of pre and post-migration.
- Clarity of Goals
The organization needs to be absolutely clear about their goals when moving to the cloud, because, all workloads and applications are not suitable for the cloud. When organizations do not have a clear vision then they end up with huge unnecessary cost and time. It could cost them security problems which in the end make cloud deployment not viable. The business needs to remember that shifting to the cloud is not like lifting the entire operation in a single day and it is done.
- The organizations need to take the full advantage of cloud
The organizations, if they need to take full advantage from cloud services should rethink each assumption and consider the “disposable” cloud entities in a practical way so that, the features could be turned off when necessary and scaled down to match the usage pattern. Just moving traditional hardware into the cloud will not leverage any of the benefits that cloud provides.
- It is necessary to back up every data and encrypt them
Most of the organizations think conservatively about moving to the cloud due to a fear that originates from commissioning the data to a third party. Some of these may be exaggerated but realistically that organizations should not trust anyone except them for their data. That is why they should back up everything regularly even the off-site data and keep these encrypted