Business leaders considering migration to the cloud find all aspects of the process challenging, according to a recent survey by IDG Research. That’s despite the fact that 59 percent of respondents had already moved applications to the cloud.

They recognize the business benefits of migration, but claim to be struggling with issues such as strategy development, security and application performance.

Challenges at Every Stage

However, many of the challenges center around the use of internal resources to handle migration across all three phases – planning, building and testing, and post-migration management and support.

Around 70 percent of respondents found each of those phases challenging, with planning rated highest in terms of extremely challenging tasks. Among the most important contributing factors were lack of staff time, skills and cloud experience.

To overcome these challenges, respondents recognized the importance of working with service providers to help them achieve their goals. Businesses look for a wide range of expertise with the top three requirements covering deep cloud security expertise, experience in cloud architecture and engineering, and compliance enablement.

Improve Planning

Planning and preparation was seen as the biggest challenge. Providers can help here by focusing attention on both business and technical considerations. They can help businesses identify the most relevant benefits of cloud migration, which might include improved application performance, streamlined business processes, scalability, lower TCO and CapEx, and reduced burden on IT.

Providers can also help businesses assess the applications and services that are suitable for migration, as well as calculating potential performance gains. At a more detailed level, they can identify dependencies within the existing infrastructure and establish migration priorities.

With security and compliance ranking high on the migration challenges, providers can advise on the measures that will protect data and the business. By working with an experienced provider, businesses can develop a comprehensive strategy and a secure, practical migration plan.

Speed Implementation

Implementation is also a challenge, particularly for midmarket companies with respondents rating lack of cloud skills as the number one challenge. Respondents felt they needed ongoing support and guidance throughout the implementation process.

Specialist migration providers use automation tools such as VTG’s ZENfra^TM, which manages and monitors migration projects. These tools can cut lead times by 30 to 40 percent and reduce costs by 25 percent compared to traditional in-house methods.

One of the most important benefits cited by survey respondents was a reduced burden on IT. But, IT skills also ranked as one of the main challenges to successful migration, before during and after the project. Providers can also overcome this challenge by taking responsibility for monitoring, support and security to ensure users enjoy a reliable service with minimal downtime.

Overcome Challenges

Cloud migration can be a very time-consuming process, consisting of many repetitive tasks. By working with a migration specialist, you can minimize downtime and complete projects faster.

Migration specialists have the skills, experience and tools to complete the large number of repetitive tasks quickly. An experienced migration specialist can help you overcome the challenges and drive important benefits.

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