Migrating to the Cloud:
How to Overcome Common Obstacles
Many IT and business leaders embark on their cloud migration journey expecting a straightforward process. However, executing a successful cloud migration is far from simple.
Transitioning an organization’s data, applications, and workloads to the cloud requires strategic, cross-functional planning and a deep understanding of cloud architecture. This holds true for any cloud migration, whether it’s a transition from mainframe to cloud or a shift from one cloud to another.
Without a clear path forward, this transition introduces a host of challenges such as security vulnerabilities, cost overruns, and unnecessary system downtime. By investing adequate time and resources, business and IT leaders can overcome these obstacles and achieve a seamless cloud migration.
What is a cloud migration plan?
A cloud migration plan refers to an organization’s strategy for migrating to the cloud. An effective plan addresses both the technical aspects of migration, such as application refactoring, and strategic elements, like aligning cloud capabilities with business goals.
Creating a cloud migration strategy requires proactive planning and collaboration across multiple business units. Key stakeholders typically include the CIO or CTO and leaders from the organization’s IT, operations, and legal and compliance teams.
Cross-functional planning enables the development of a comprehensive strategy that considers diverse perspectives, potential risks, and resource allocation. Without the right expertise and a robust plan, the challenges of moving enterprise workloads to the cloud can significantly hinder your migration.
Migrating to the cloud: Tackling 3 common obstacles
As you create or refine your cloud migration plan, it’s crucial to account for potential roadblocks and challenges, from downtime and data loss to a lack of interoperability. Be sure to address these common obstacles in your documented strategy to ensure a seamless transition:
- Security
Migrating to the cloud involves obvious security-related challenges like maintaining internal controls and preserving encryption. However, business and IT leaders often overlook other critical considerations, such as ensuring data residency and sovereignty and clearly defining security responsibilities between the organization and cloud service provider.
To mitigate security challenges during cloud migration, start by conducting a thorough risk assessment to identify potential concerns and vulnerabilities. It’s also important to implement and maintain robust identity and access management (IdAM) solutions so you can monitor access to cloud resources.
Additionally, establish clear security policies and procedures that address data protection, incident response, and compliance requirements. Provide ongoing training to ensure all stakeholders and employees understand their roles in maintaining security.
- Availability
Complex IT architecture can complicate the process of moving storage and applications to the cloud — especially when deployed across multiple networks. If the interconnections and dependencies within such infrastructure aren’t properly understood and documented, ensuring continuous availability and performance can become very difficult. Network latency and bandwidth limitations can also impact the efficiency of your applications once migrated.
But the reality is that not all applications should move to the cloud. Solutions like Cloud-Connected Mainframe for Microsoft Azure and Cloud-Connected Mainframe for AWS can significantly help with latency and reduce egress charges by enabling mainframe workloads to seamlessly integrate with cloud services.
To avoid unexpected technical issues during the migration process, start by considering your options in worst-case scenarios. For example, can you quickly restore critical services in the event of a compute-level failure? Can you switch to a backup network connection if your primary one fails? Working through these scenarios and documenting best practices and next steps for mitigating their impact enables you to maintain business continuity as you migrate to cloud infrastructure. Additionally, performance monitoring tools can help you proactively identify and mitigate latency issues and other challenges.
- Cost optimization
While many organizations are migrating to the cloud for the flexibility, accessibility and cost-effectiveness of cloud infrastructure, an ill-planned migration can cause your total cost of ownership (TCO) to skyrocket. For example, failing to optimize workloads before migration can lead to over-provisioning of resources, resulting in unexpectedly high fees.
Maintaining a low TCO requires a deep understanding of cloud cost management principles. This is where third-party expertise can make a significant impact. In a recent survey, 37% of IT leaders identified cost management capabilities as the top need from cloud providers to successfully advance their cloud strategies.
Prioritize upfront planning and set clear KPIs to measure savings post-migration. Additionally, implement cloud migration tools that enable cost optimization once your workloads are in the cloud, such as automation. Strong governance practices are also critical, including policies for resource allocation, continuous usage monitoring, and controls for preventing cost overruns.
Migrate to cloud infrastructure with Ensono
Even with a robust cloud migration strategy in place, executing your plan is a tall order. Ensono’s dedicated cloud experts are here to help you optimize your transition to the cloud, from application mapping and sprint planning to executing your migration.
Access to third-party expertise empowers you to transition to the cloud seamlessly and minimize downtime while ensuring your cloud environment is secure, efficient, and aligned with your business objectives.
Get in touch with our experts to accelerate your cloud migration plan.