Biggest Challenges Facing Cloud Migration

Cloud migrations enable businesses to boost agility, serve more customers, and scale in ways that have never before been possible. At the same time, cloud migration challenges can lead to increased difficulty during this process.

Often, growth engineers may struggle with finishing an implementation because unseen problems arise. By strategizing ways of meeting the challenges discussed in this article, you can circumvent obstacles that could block your progress. With the knowledge from this article, navigate the twists and turns of your cloud migration journey more easily.

A Deeper Look at Cloud Migration

Cloud migration is the transfer of organizational infrastructure, applications, and data from on-premises systems to cloud-based environments. The complexity of the migration depends on the number of resources supported in each project.

Cloud migration includes:

Productivity software
Platforms for business services
Enterprise databases
Remote desktops
Web/mobile applications
Internet of Things (IoT)
Edge servers
CRM support systems
SD-WAN
Network administration tools

The migrated assets can be stored, managed, and processed on the cloud, which provides businesses with benefits such as scalability, cost-efficiency, and accessibility. Operations can continue to run using on-premises data while the cloud data is prepared and synchronized to help mitigate potential disruptions until the data can be transferred.

Cloud Migration Challenges

While this transfer occurs, organizations may face obstacles ranging from technical complexities and security concerns to cost worries and time and resource commitment.

It’s important to understand and address these challenges so organizations can receive the benefits of cloud technology while minimizing disruptions and maximizing the value of migration efforts.

1. Integration Complexity

It can be difficult to integrate legacy systems into a cloud environment, especially when you must incorporate data transformation as well. This is often necessary because the data formats that legacy systems use may be different than what cloud tools can interface with.

Legacy systems may not be fully compatible with cloud environments, which could lead to data loss or corruption during the migration process—to avoid this, specialized middleware or significant system refactoring may be necessary.

In addition to transforming legacy data, many organizations have to figure out how to mimic and improve legacy-based workflows using cloud resources. For example, suppose a business wants to use a cloud-based development platform instead of a legacy one hosted on-premises.

Currently, developers duplicate databases whenever an additional application needs the information inside. This is time-consuming and prone to human error. Switching to a cloud-based development environment allows you to use a compartmentalized approach and microservices to share one database with many applications.

Even though this will improve efficiency, it has ripple effects across your entire development process. Working through these issues can be difficult and delay your return on investment. Having a strategy for implementing new software can help to avoid these challenges.

2. Managing Costs

The cost of a cloud migration can be challenging because ongoing costs can spiral without proper monitoring and management, causing the transfer to exceed your initial budget. Although cloud services can certainly be more cost-effective in the long run, the initial migration may include high upfront costs and an increase in operational costs.

For instance, the cost of application programming interfaces (APIs) can easily climb above expectations, especially if an application you have in the cloud has to make more API requests than your team had predicted.

Another cost that can creep up, despite having a thoughtful strategy, is the expense of scaling up. It can be tough to predict when you’ll have to scale and to what degree. And, for some cloud implementations, it could also be hard to predict which additional services you’ll need.

Another cost factor is the number of systems you end up migrating to the cloud. For example, you may start with a relatively linear migration, such as shifting your customer relationship management (CRM) System to a cloud-based solution.

However, after experiencing the benefits, decision-makers may want to digitally transform more processes, which would require additional cloud investments.

3. Employee Training

Despite the convenience and ease of use of cloud solutions, they each come with a learning curve. Also, more complex cloud ecosystems may require people to learn how to navigate multiple cloud environments. Slow learning curves can hinder productivity and result in frustrated employees who become resistant to cloud migration.

Training these employees to be comfortable using the new tools can eliminate these challenges. But this can take considerable time and human resources.

To illustrate, suppose you decide to migrate some of your network to a cloud-based software-defined networking (SD-WAN) solution. This would enable you to enhance security—which helps prevent data breaches—and optimize how data flows across your organization.

However, your internal network engineers may be used to using legacy, on-premises hardware. While they welcome more efficient systems, they’ve grown accustomed to sourcing, configuring, installing, and updating your legacy network hardware.

Teaching them how to work with an optimized cloud-hosted SD-WAN solution can take time, and you may not have the internal staff needed to facilitate the training. It’s important to understand the time and resources needed, otherwise you risk straining resources and disrupting your business.

Leveraging Professional Services to Overcome Cloud Migration Challenges

The good news is with a professional cloud service provider like Evergreen, you can meet each of these challenges head-on:

Professional service providers are used to navigating intricate, complicated cloud migrations. They also have techniques for aligning complex migrations with unique business goals.
With a professional services provider on your side, you also get someone who understands the costs a cloud migration may involve—both in the short- and long-term. Using their knowledge, you don’t have to worry about surprise expenses derailing your budget.
Training services are also often part of a professional service provider’s portfolio. They can take the time to train your current staff, so they’re comfortable working in your new cloud environment, which reduces your total cost of ownership (TCO) and boosts your ROI.

Evergreen Can Ensure a Smooth Cloud Migration

When you partner with Evergreen, you get experienced technical solutions and professional experience with navigating the cloud migration challenge landscape. With a team of Cloud experts on your side, you can look forward to a smoother, more effective migration. Start growing with Evergreen by connecting with us today.