Migrating to the cloud is an excellent strategy for many businesses, but sometimes, they plan to migrate without enough preparation. Doing this can lead to roadblocks, complicated decisions, and ultimately, many companies decide to abandon the plan entirely. Here are some strategies for migrating to the cloud after already trying it.
Why Did the Previous Migration Fail?
The first step to rebooting your cloud migration is to understand why the initial migration failed in the first place. Cloud migrations vary from business to business, and while there are various industry-specific obstacles they may face, there is one common theme stalling them all—planning. Typically, those at the forefront of migrating to the cloud are the IT department. They are the ones most familiar with the benefits and how integrating with the cloud would benefit the business as a whole.
However, IT is not the one to choose whether they migrate or not. This department must communicate the benefits of the cloud to leadership higher-ups, and then a strategy has to be developed in a way that loops in all parties. These strategies typically come from the executives in the business, and there is a lack of understanding about the cloud and what is actually required for a successful migration.
An additional aspect that companies require for a successful cloud migration is a clear trust and communication between all levels of the company. IT needs to communicate with the leadership so they can devise clear and easily implementable strategy. Implementation can be difficult from this point forward. This is why the appropriate parties need to be involved, as they need to address issues when they arise.
The Frozen Middle
Another significant aspect as to why many migrations fail is the frozen middle. The IT department and the top executives are not the only ones affected by these migrations. There are numerous mid-level managers and teams that will need to plan around a migration, figuring out which tasks they can do without access to their traditional resources. Migration can also be a costly endeavor, and many managers could become frustrated as there are much-needed changes that need to happen in their departments as well.
While a cloud migration will ultimately benefit everyone at the end of the day, it can be hard to step back and see this when you are in the thick of it. All you know is that people at the top say it will help the company. Meanwhile, you have to turn your whole work strategy upside down to accommodate the migration. Tensions can be high, which is why proper planning, strategies, communication, and transparency are necessary for the migration to go off successfully.
Develop a Business Case
After seeing why cloud migrations can fail, you need to learn how to perform one successfully. The first step to creating a successful migration is for your team to develop a business case. A business case is a detailed explanation of why the migration is beneficial for the business as a whole, and it needs to outline the risks involved as well. The best way to do something is to know what could go wrong beforehand. This way, everyone can properly outline things, and then they can tackle issues when they do come up.
This business case also needs to be multi-leveled, outlining the implications for every department and the users. This sort of transparency is required so that everyone can agree and understand their role in the entire process.
Create Clear and Narrow Goals
On top of a business case explaining why migration is beneficial to your business, you need goals. Goals keep everything moving, and they set unambiguous expectations about the progress of the migration. A goal could be something as simple as, “Moving X application to the cloud in BLANK timeframe.” These sorts of goals could be hard to get behind, but it shows the progress and how things are moving. An additional aspect of these goals is that they create accountability. If the migration was happening behind closed doors and wasn’t going to plan, it could be a lot easier to drop it instead of doing everything possible to get it back together.
Similarly, these goals need to be achievable. For example, the goal cannot be to move the entire system to the cloud, because that is relatively unachievable. Rather than creating a goal like this, choose smaller ones with manageable timelines. This way, teams can work together to get them done and feel a sense of satisfaction with their work.
The different teams should also handle these goals one at a time. For example, when you migrate to the cloud, employees need to rework a lot of applications to get them functional for this new infrastructure. The teams can do these sorts of tasks, and they can also do the migration, but it is hard for every department to do both things at once. Set goals and have people do them one at a time, instead of feeling the need to complete all of them at once—an impossible task to achieve.
Hire the Right People and Services
Another issue that many businesses face, and the reason why many migrations have failed, is that they expect too much from their engineers. They could migrate everything to the cloud, but it is too big a task to complete in the timeframe laid out for them. These sorts of migrations require a large team with significant amounts of time, which is often not afforded to them.
The right engineers can get a task done in a timely manner, but they also need to work with the right cloud platforms. For example, certain cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure can automate a lot of security and compliance tasks, taking a significant burden off your engineers. This way, your team can focus on the more minute issues regarding compliance and migration.
This was how to reboot your cloud migration projects, and you can do this migration whenever you want. The only obstacle in your way is proper planning, and at Atmosera, we can help take care of that for you. We offer Microsoft Azure migration services and can help you avoid common migration mistakes. We will help you achieve your desired outcome and leave you with a modernized cloud infrastructure that benefits your business.
