Modernising the way your enterprise handles, stores and uses data can be invaluable in increasing the efficiency of your operations, making vital information more accessible and providing more means of analysis and presentation.
This is especially true where the cloud is concerned, where further advantages include the capacity to establish much stronger data security, a key concern in an age of ever-more sophisticated and prolific cybercrime.
However, any modernization that involves migrating data and systems to the cloud comes with challenges. It is important to know what these are and what you can do about them.
Many of these are very familiar issues. In 2020, for instance, Conoco listed six cloud migration challenges. Among these was the cost, which is based primarily on the fact that without using the cloud, your firm can own all the IT infrastructure involved and thus control your budget.
Another concern is that of legacy apps that are incompatible with the cloud, which undoubtedly is a challenge. Conoco responded that, in the end, every firm needs to modernize and therefore those legacy apps will have to give way sooner or later anyway.
The lack of a guarantee of downtime was another concern. That could also apply to your in-house systems, though at least in the latter case it is you, not your cloud provider, who takes on the task of solving any issue. That said, your cloud provider may have more expertise to hand to find solutions.
Conoco suggested that disaster recovery policies should be robust to help deal with a downtime scenario, but that is equally true if your in-house system has a problem.
Fear of being locked into one provider through systems that are only compatible with them is understandable and sometimes justified, but this can be avoided by working with specialist vendors who can design systems that can work with multiple possible system providers.
These providers should also offer great IT expertise to overcome any concerns you have about a lack of such skills in-house.
Above all these issues, the greatest worry is security. A study by Foundry last year revealed security and privacy were the top challenges for firms implementing a cloud strategy.
This is entirely understandable and a good sign; it is firms that take this issue lightly that are likely to fall foul of the cyber crooks. However, the key question is what can be done about it.
According to the survey of company IT decision makers, one of the chief needs firms adopting the cloud required of their cloud service providers was security expertise, alongside cost control and cloud management skills.
What this shows is that when migrating to the cloud, some issues require you to bite the bullet (such as on legacy apps), some require good general preparedness (such as disaster recovery policies that you should have anyway), but, above all, you need the right provider of cloud services.
That means using a provider who provides flexible systems that different vendors can serve, fills the gaps in your in-house IT knowledge and brings to bear all the security expertise you need. With all this, the challenges of migrating to the cloud as a centerpiece of an IT modernisation strategy will be much easier to navigate.
