What can go wrong with the cloud

Considering taking the leap into cloud technology for your business? Lauded as THE cost-effective, safe and scalable solution for hosting and integrating business applications to power your business, it is worth knowing what can go wrong, so that you can approach your journey to cloud in the best, most effective and secure way for your business.

Here are 6 things to know:

Failing to define your business objective

Do you know what objective you want to achieve by moving to the cloud? If you don’t define the move in terms of the goals you wish to reach, your success will be hard to measure, and the investment you make, even harder to quantify.

Before you approach cloud providers, know what your objective is. This will give you a good baseline on which to judge providers and make sure you partner with the right one. If you have a clear objective, you will be able to evaluate more easily the cloud provider whose services most align with your business.

Thinking you can move everything, straightaway

It’s unlikely to be the case that you can move all your applications to the cloud just like that. Some will be unsuitable, some will need replacing, or upgrading. Make an assessment of all your application so you can identify those that can be moved as-is to the cloud, and those that need to be replaced or upgraded.

A simple plan for your applications will also lend itself to a migration roadmap, enabling you to put in timescales for migrations and plan your business systems around those timescales accordingly.

Forgetting about disaster recover

Have you got the necessary contingencies built into your migration plan? We always say, “just because it’s in the cloud, doesn’t mean to say you don’t need to back it up". Ask your cloud provider: what if there is a cybersecurity breach? What if there is a power outage?

Your business cannot risk reputational failure and productivity, so make sure you your migration plan mitigates for disasters and that your provider has solutions to ensure your mission-critical applications stay up and running at all costs.

Not understanding and controlling costs

This again comes down to understanding and clearly defining your business objective/s to be achieved by moving to the cloud. It’s easy to get carried away by what cloud can achieve, but if you start moving everything to the cloud, over and above your original plan, the costs will spiral.

Make sure your cost-benefit analyses stack up, and that you understand the costs to your organisation of cloud, when you are moving additional workloads and processes to the cloud.

Thinking it’s all done just because you’ve moved it

If you think that just moving applications to the cloud is going to power your business, then maybe, but have your considered there is more to cloud computing, and the return on your investment, than just simply moving there? 
What about performance tools, automation and streamlining operations and process? Get into the mindset, and get curious, about what opportunities exist with cloud to take your business to the next level.

Not thinking a full managed service is for you

There are many knock-on and interlinked considerations when a business starts to move to the cloud. For instance, your data security around other non-cloud business areas, employee protocol, permissions and managing access.

You may also find your team has a skills gap when it comes to new ways of working in the cloud. Can you handle training inhouse? This and many other considerations can be taken care of by managed cloud services, where your provider assesses and takes care of the whole view, rather than parts. Obviously, the cost involved is more, but in the long-term, this is likely to be the safest and most cost-effective way for your business to move to the cloud.

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