From recent research, Unisys has mentioned that nearly one-third of all cloud migrations are failing. This is because most companies have not yet adopted cloud as a vital part of their business.
This report comes from a survey done by Unisys in 2019. They surveyed 1000 senior IT’s and business leaders from 13 countries to measure global cloud transformation efforts’ success rate. Sadly this report also told us that 37% of American companies failed to see the benefits from their cloud solutions. However, 77% of respondents made cloud part of their primary strategies and found it moderately profitable. The overall analysis suggests that the companies are unwilling to change their business strategies to reflect the cloud. This can be one of the significant reasons for cloud to fall back.
A few words from Raj Raman, CTO of Cloud at Unisys revealed that “These results illustrate that cloud transformation is not just an IT issue, it’s a business issue, “The question is how to go about adoption. As this research shows, you need to integrate cloud into your overall business strategy, including assessing how it can help boost revenue, gain competitive advantage, improve productivity and manage costs. Yet, many businesses do not realize that reaping the benefits of cloud requires more than just a ‘lift and shift and you’re done approach. You need the right framework in place at the outset and a continual cadence of innovation and updates over time.”
Unisys also learned that out of 92% of cloud users, only 28% were gripping on to multi-cloud architecture with the final report. Raman also stated that “Organizations that adopt multi-cloud strategies can design applications to run across any public cloud platform, expanding their marketplace power. Additionally, a multi-cloud strategy helps organizations gain greater sovereignty over their data, spread their risk in case of downtime, and increase the business’s negotiating leverage – as well as offering cost savings by allowing businesses to shop rates for different service needs from multiple vendors.”
Considering all the factors, There are a few reasons why cloud migration fails
- Cloud Migration Face Challenges
- Routing For A Wrong Migration Approach
- Going Bigger Too Soon
- Not Testing Profoundly
- Overlooking The Human Element
- Hold No Solid Business Case For Cloud Migration
- Thinking All Cloud Providers Are Identical
Cloud Migration Face Challenges
Malik, A senior vice president and CIO of Silkroad technology, said that cloud migration’s failure did not surprise him since he has been in similar situations in his past company. He explained one such scenario that he faced with his team. They moved a data analytics application to a public cloud offering that Microsoft Azure hosted. Their core reason to move it was to scale up or down more efficiently at a lower cost. Just then, Mark understood and explained that “We thought it was Capex versus Opex. We thought we could save a lot of money and get rid of managing infrastructure. But we were wrong.”
There were glitches from the beginning. His IT workers experienced latency issues immediately and identified limitations within their networking equipment that further delayed the app’s performance. He also stated that “We kept throwing compute resources and storage resources at it,” which drove up the cost. Considering all the confusion and financial problems revolving around them, he decided to move the app out of the cloud and back on-premises. The team had to work on everything all over again, and it took about eight months to complete.
Routing For A Wrong Migration Approach
Another common migration failure happens, When businesses choose the wrong migration approach. Usually, migration will have more than one path to choose from. But organizations do not do a detailed analysis to find the right one that fits their bill. The lift and shift approach, app modernization, refactoring, and replatforming are all popular methods, and each has different migration strategies. The lift and shift approach is the cheapest amongst all, and many businesses opt for this option. Not only for the budget, but it is also known to be the fastest and least disruptive model of all.
Generally, while moving an app to its new cloud-based home as it is, Any pre-existing issues or glitches will come with it. This means shifting your bugs to the new environment space can cause more destruction while implementing. Mike Wood, Product manager at AWS advanced technology partner sentry one, says that many cloud users tend to give in to the lift and shift model. Even Mike says that “A lot of companies will jump on the lift and shift approach to migrating because it seems like the easy answer. Lift and shift have the potential to be quick, but it’s not always the best route to take.” This option is taken the higher route because it’s little to no code changes, which becomes the cheapest option. However, they do not look forward to seeing the operational cost involved after the migration process.
Hence, make sure you explore all the available options before opting for the proper method which fits your budget, timescale, and long-term needs.
Going Bigger Too Soon
Cloud migrations can become amiss not only because of how you would like to make a move but also because of what you’re trying to shift to the cloud. It’s always best to think and plan out to see if you need a cloud migration for your business. Even Though the whole migration process may sound seamless, it is huge and can be an intensive one. You will require a lot of time, effort, and reeducation of staff at different levels. Also, a few workloads are not meant to choose the migration option as they may be tricky. According to Elemi Atigolo, it’s essential to keep in mind that not every app, and not every part of your infrastructure, is necessarily a candidate for migration: “Migration solutions can be high risk,” he says, “and can take years to complete depending on the size and complexity of the architecture.
That being said, once you’ve decided on the parts in your organization that preferably will need the support of cloud migration, you will have to prioritize them. It’s perfectly fine to begin small and build up your cloud portfolio over time.
Not Testing Profoundly
Testing is an essential step towards lowering a cloud migration disaster. This testing should not be done only once the migration process is complete but should also be focused on before the migration process. It should take place in every stage of your migration plan step by step. By doing this, you can experience a smooth transition and will help resolve any issues at the earliest stage possible.
Atigolo says, “Many organizations fail to extensively or adequately test before migrating their entire infrastructure to the cloud.” “Trying to work towards unrealistic timelines is a recipe for disaster. You should see migration as a quick win but a planned strategy to add tangible benefits to your organization. The same level of planning, attention, due diligence, and testing is required for migration as it would be if you were building a new architecture or center for your data.”
Overlooking The Human Element
Cloud migration is a transformation project. It doesn’t imply just for the tech space but also all the humans working behind the scenes. Your entire IT team should be given a warm-up of what’s coming up and how they should handle the whole cloud system right. Their roles may tend to change, and it is always best to give them a heads up. They should be ready to adopt new ways of doing things and provide better support to your customers. Involve people to get on board earlier with the entire process to don’t fall back and get into havoc. A prior heads-up can also lead them to complete all the advantages and find it even more essential to work with. To avoid and resolve their confusion and queries faster, put up an open door feedback channel in place.
Holding No Solid Business Case For Cloud Migration
Asking questions before taking up the cloud route can help you a lot. Do not take the cloud migration route just because everyone else is or because it’s the future.
Make sure it fits your needs and goals and resolves your necessities. Gist out all the pros and cons of taking up the migration and ask yourself is it all worth it in the end.
Thinking All Cloud Providers Are Identical
You should first decide on what kind of cloud provider you are looking for. Choosing the right cloud provider should always be your prime focus. There are three different types of cloud – Private cloud, Public cloud, and Hybrid cloud. Each provider gives you a varied list of services. Once you have shortlisted the various cloud providers of your choice, make sure they cover the following points.
- You know and understand who would provide you the documentation, support, and training for the new service.
- You hold the entire list of applications that get covered within the service opted and the capacity.
- The service provided who you have chosen compliant with the industry standards and regulations.
- You have complete knowledge of the vendor’s data security and cloud disaster recovery provisions and obligations.
- You have explicit knowledge of how the scaling can occur with the service provider and at what capacity. And so on.
Final Words
Once you have chosen your provider, it’s best to stick with him for the long term. Switching between providers often or later down the lane can create a high additional cost and unwanted disruptions in your operations. Be the ones who adopt the right cloud migration strategy for your organization. If you need any guidance on this, Team Ziffity is just a call away.
