Business Transformation: 7 Cloud Migration Pitfalls To Avoid

Cloud computing has revolutionised the way organisations in Australia operate by replacing traditional data centres with cloud-based services. The cloud allows organisations a range of benefits such as agility, flexibility, self-service provisioning, redundancy, scalability, and more. All of which can make a significant difference for many Australian enterprises by helping them achieve operational efficiency and optimised resource utilisation.

In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2025, IT spending on public cloud computing will overtake spending on traditional IT. It added that 65.9% of spending on application software will be directed toward cloud technologies, up from 57.7% in 2022.

For forward-thinking CIOs, cloud technologies are the future. Cloud migration is an opportunity for organisations to develop and implement a future-forward plan, but it can be a complex process. Management, technology and staff realignment are all factors that need to be considered when migrating to the cloud.

Many factors influence the success of cloud migration projects, including security risks and people, process and technology alignment. However, the misconceptions, myths and biases that creep into the boardroom from the media, analysts and vendors who certainly shape our perceptions about what it takes to move to the cloud are a particularly potent determinant of whether or not a migration succeeds.

Myths such as; everything can be migrated to the cloud, or that their security concerns will be taken care of by their cloud provider and that cloud migration is a fast process with a one-size-fits-all “multi-cloud” model for different types of organisations can undermine the decision-making process. This creates challenges for CIOs, especially when selecting a cloud environment and management platform, which can lead to implications down the track where organisations find themselves trying shoe-horn enterprise-wide cloud adoption to fit broader or shifting needs.

Cloud migrations can encounter the same issues as any other project, including risks that must be considered before starting a cloud migration. The impact of these mistakes may override the benefits offered by cloud migration.

A cloud migration survey by Sungard Availability Services noted that 56% (of respondents) named a lack of understanding of cloud security and compliance best practices as a major challenge. About 55% acknowledged the lack of a clearly defined business case for the migration while 44% pleaded guilty to insufficient planning. Here are some common pitfalls to avoid:

Insufficient Leadership Alignment

Achieving leadership alignment in cloud migration is a critical success factor for any organisation wanting to make the transition to the cloud. A recent Accenture survey of IT leaders identified three key barriers to cloud migration: lack of executive support, lack of resources and time, and lack of knowledge about what is involved in cloud migration.

It is important for an organisation’s leaders to understand these barriers and work together with their teams on a plan that addresses each issue. CIOs need to ensure they provide the board with critical insights, facts and data so it can leverage its business and strategic experience to guide leadership teams as they think through how the cloud can drive business outcomes.

Given cloud computing has entered the mainstream of enterprise data storage, and forward-thinking boards are beginning to incorporate it into their risk-assessment frameworks, for those that still need convincing, one way CIOs can help align the board and executive team is by updating security training as part of the effort to unlock the advantages of cloud computing whilst mitigating security risks.

Lack of Knowledge

Myths aside, a lack of knowledge about cloud migration can lead to mistakes in the process. CIOs should work closely with the business to understand what it wants to achieve through cloud adoption and how the cloud can help it get there.

With a clear set of migration goals defined, it is important to understand that not all business elements can be migrated. Hence, organisations need to follow a logical process and consider the following steps.

• Clarify the business migration goals and organisational-wide needs.
• Identify the elements that can be migrated.
• Take a stock of the elements that will be migrated. Check their interdependence on other aspects of the business.
• Assess the impact of migration of the specific elements.
• Develop a roadmap for the migration of the specified elements.
• Rearchitect the systems to leverage the benefits offered by cloud services.
• Choose the best cloud service for the organisation based on its features and costs.

Businesses have options of different cloud services to choose from, such as:

• Public cloud
• Private cloud
• Hybrid cloud
• Multi-cloud

Although the process seems straightforward, the impact of making mistakes here may override the benefits offered by cloud migration. It is critical that CIOs qualify external parties to support cloud migration. Even within the same technology category, not all offerings are equal. The cloud community’s open approach to developing solutions has enabled a proliferation of good, better, and best technologies in the market. The challenge for the CIOs is to determine which approach and vendor partners will best meet their requirements.

Selecting the wrong approach

Migration is an umbrella term for the various paths to achieving a particular goal. However, not all businesses take the time to research their options, which can result in costly inefficiencies.

McKinsey warns that missteps in coordinating the migration are taking a toll. Those inefficiencies are costing the average company 14% more in migration spending than planned each year, and 38% of companies have seen their migrations delayed by more than one quarter.

The lift and shift approach, app modernisation, and refactoring are all popular methods of moving your business to the cloud. Each has its own pros and cons when it comes to migrating your processes to a new platform.

Many businesses opt for the lift and shift approach when migrating to a new environment since it tends to be the fastest and least disruptive model (at least in theory). Involving porting an application or operation over from one environment to another without redesigning or restructuring, can be an inexpensive way of migrating systems, but it is not without drawbacks.

It’s critical that CIOs do due diligence to look at what their operational costs will be after the migration to avoid issues that might undermine its effectiveness both operationally and economically.

Managing Security and Compliance

Cloud computing automatically exposes organisations to cybersecurity risks. These risks have been a concern since the technology was introduced, and they remain so today. Approximately 66% of IT professionals consider security to be a major challenge to cloud adoption.

As the cloud becomes more complex, it will be even more important for IT leaders to keep these risks in mind. In 2023, CIOs involved in cloud migration efforts need to be aware of the growing threat of cyber attacks that target misconfigurations and vulnerabilities in running workloads.

By 2023, experts predict malicious actors will look for further initial access targets such as attacks via cloud infrastructure or cloud service providers. Organisations will need to think beyond conventional security measures to avoid increasing efforts from attackers focused on compromising cloud service and hosting accounts in order to find their way into corporate environments.

Insufficient Testing

Testing is an essential step toward cloud migration success. However, many companies neglect to test until their apps and infrastructure have already been moved to the new cloud environment, more often than not this is symptomatic of trying to work towards unrealistic timelines – which is a recipe for disaster.

Rather than approaching cloud migration as a quick win initiative (as we saw during the pandemic), but as a planned strategy to add tangible benefits to your organisation. The same level of planning, attention, due diligence, and testing is required for migration as it would be if you were building a new architecture.

Therefore, testing should be an integral part of your migration plan, with sufficient time for testing factored into the timeline. The more you test early on, the easier it will be to spot any potential problems and smooth out the process later.

Maintaining Cost Control

Without a cost control system in place, cloud-related costs can quickly spiral out of control. This is especially true when departments outside of IT weigh in on cloud spending; their changes and adjustments can add to an organisation's overall cloud budget.

An essential step in the process of defining how costs will be managed during a cloud migration hinges on a deep understanding of the interdepartmental applications, data and processes that will be moved to the cloud. Working through these inter-dependencies, can help IT leaders keep a firm grip on the project scope. As with any enterprise-wide implementation, scope creep is common.

Whilst this can make your project more expensive, time-consuming and complex. One of the biggest challenges in a project is limiting change requests. Making changes to a project once it has started can be very expensive, time-consuming and complex.

To avoid this issue, consider creating a cloud governance program. Such programs are helpful in establishing protocols that dictate how your team will manage the project and the types of limits that will be put in place to ensure costs do not rise unnecessarily.

CIOs should include procedures in their plan to limit these requests as much as possible as the project progresses by ensuring the migration meets the business's needs during the planning phase.

The human element

Like any other business transformation, cloud migration is a transformative process. It can totally revolutionise the way a business creates products, delivers services, or connects with customers. But in order for these changes to occur, people as well as processes need to adapt.

The process of managing change in the cloud is complex. Enterprise-wide changes can affect how almost every function of the business works, so strategic and careful consideration of core change management concepts – such as identifying stakeholders, change impacts, executive sponsors, change champions, and aligning on a strategy – is paramount for a successful execution down the road.

CIOs should seek to establish a network of change champions who can help cascade messaging and exponentially increase the number of employees reached, but also serve as an integral feedback channel throughout the project.

Jobs roles can often change during cloud migration initiatives, this can lead to a loss of expertise that is not properly managed through clear communication and training plans.

LinkedIn rates cloud computing as the most sought-after tech skill, along with artificial intelligence and big data. In addition, a report by Gartner found that talent shortages are a significant challenge for the successful adoption of emerging technologies like cloud computing. For example, 64% of survey respondents reported that skilled worker availability is the largest challenge, compared to 4% in 2020 and 14% in 2019.

Therefore, it is essential that boards and executives include a skills gap analysis before embarking on planned cloud migration programs. Ensuring the business retains employees with relevant cloud expertise whilst supplementing knowledge and skills gaps through proactive hiring in the early stages is an essential step in securing cloud migration success.

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