3 Biggest Mistakes Companies Make When Adopting Cloud Computing
According to Hosting Tribunal, 94% of corporations have a cloud presence, however solely 20% have undergone cloud transformation. In half, that’s as a result of cloud transformation is an costly initiative for corporations, leading to thousands and thousands of {dollars} and 1000’s of individual hours spent. Some of those prices, nonetheless, will be circumvented, particularly if corporations keep away from three frequent errors: elevate and shift rehosting; underestimating the maintenance of cloud administration; and believing that migrating to the cloud is a cost-reduction initiative.
Lift and Shift Rehosting
By definition, elevate and shift means shifting an software and its related knowledge to a cloud platform –without redesigning the app. Lift and shift rehosting is by far and away the shortest, easiest, and most simple option to migrate to the cloud. It doesn’t require any new instruments or re-architecting of software stack, and it will probably even be outsourced to an exterior company. (*3*) selected to make use of elevate and shift again in 2014, when it had solely two months to relocate from a neighborhood knowledge platform. Afterwards, the corporate continued to streamline its workflow within the cloud.
Lift and shift, nonetheless, will not be with out its pitfalls. It doesn’t clear up the preliminary issues that necessitated the migration within the first place. Lift and shift merely transfers the inefficiencies from knowledge facilities to cloud. In addition, because the wants of a enterprise enhance, elevate and shift won’t carry out nicely in the long term as a result of it doesn’t reap the benefits of the cloud’s native capabilities (resembling having a repeatable sustainable infrastructure), and the prices concerned can become far dearer than anticipated.
To keep away from these pitfalls, corporations ought to suppose strategically and deal with migration as a possibility to optimize their useful resource utilization and software stack. They additionally ought to break down migration and software modernization in phases, in addition to prioritize a milestone-based strategy that takes benefit of cloud native capabilities.
Cloud Upkeep
Even when corporations migrate to the cloud effectively and successfully, they want to ensure they aren’t caught off guard in relation to repairs. Unlike conventional knowledge facilities, cloud administration sometimes includes managing and scaling infrastructure as code, configuration as code, cloud entry administration, audit and compliance, community perimeter definition and administration, database scalability, efficiency, resilience, and improvement and observability instruments, all of that are codified. Some corporations make the transition to the cloud with out planning for the maintenance of those instruments and processes. They are unaware that it’ll require greater than conventional IT directors to effectively handle their new cloud system. As a end result, their preliminary funding — not just for the maintenance of their new system however within the hiring of the requisite engineers wanted for the area of interest instruments which might be used — could not have been adequate.
Also, as a part of the migration course of, corporations ought to create key efficiency indicators (KPIs), earlier than migrating to the cloud. Most vital, is to create the mindset of end-to-end possession (conception to manufacturing, infrastructure, and well being) inside software groups and set up a DevOps guild liable for coaching staff and using the instruments.
Don’t Underestimate Costs
It’s essential that corporations put together for and rent platform engineers — together with cloud infrastructure specialists, networking engineers, database engineers, tooling engineers and scalability engineers, with the understanding that it is a aggressive market with myriad corporations vying for these with the distinctive instruments and abilities required.
Additionally, corporations typically focus extra on cloud computing and storage sources, as an alternative of optimizing software stack, thereby spending extra on the cloud. They additionally typically imagine cloud migration is a cost-cutting initiative and examine the sticker/discounted value, with out actually understanding the useful resource wants of their software stack. Companies can keep away from these errors by performing efficiency benchmarks earlier than migration, optimizing the cloud for his or her native frameworks, and making a short-term migration roadmap, which may then be constructed upon past that preliminary interval.
Process for Success
For corporations to successfully put money into cloud migration, they should deal with the method the identical approach they deal with every other main product initiative. That means constructing a enterprise case, mapping out spending, and creating tangible advantages. Companies ought to take a look at migrating to cloud computing as a strategic initiative and never only a pure expense initiative. If they keep away from the three key errors of collaborating in efficient elevate and shift rehosting, not underestimating the maintenance of cloud administration, and never merely seeing migration to the cloud as a pure cost-reduction initiative, they may keep away from the pitfalls of finally rolling again to their outdated knowledge facilities as a result of they didn’t perceive easy methods to function or maintain their cloud presence.
