In order to succeed with your cloud migration, you need to direct your attention and effort in the right places. These mistakes in focus can make your migration fail:

Focusing solely on money

Cloud projects often have cost savings as their goal, but money shouldn’t be the sole consideration when you create your cloud migration plan. Applications that aren’t designed for the cloud may not be able to take advantage of cloud capabilities such as scaling. You may want to allot time and money for that effort rather than taking the quicker, cheaper “lift and shift” route to the cloud.

Focusing solely on technology

Switching to the cloud can be disruptive. You need the support of business management in order to make the effort succeed. Make sure the business understands how the cloud’s agility will ultimately benefit their work, and spend time planning how to transition users smoothly in order to minimize any negative impact.

Focusing too narrowly

When you plan how to transition workloads and data sets, it’s important to realize no workload exists in isolation; there’s always a larger workflow. Focusing on simply migrating individual sets of data can break those workflows. Always keep the big picture in mind.

Focusing too widely

Despite the dangers of focusing too narrowly, it’s also risky to focus too widely. If you don’t prioritize workloads that are well-suited for the cloud, you’re likely to run into problems before you enjoy any successes, and can jeopardize the entire cloud project. Be sure to start with relatively straightforward migrations that offer a low-risk way to gain experience with cloud technology.

Focusing on the dream, not the reality

No one can deny the hype level around cloud is, well, sky-high. Make sure you match your expectations to the reality of cloud capabilities. Some capabilities of cloud, such as the ability to migrate workloads between platforms, exist but require considerable work and effort to support. If you scale your expectations to match the capability of the technology and the capability of your staff, you’ll experience much less frustration.

Focusing on what the cloud provider does

It’s important to remember the cloud provider doesn’t have sole responsibility for your systems even in the cloud. You still need to have a process in place to monitor and manage these systems. This is critically important to remember when it comes to security. While the cloud provider handles many security issues, it’s still your data, and you retain the ultimate responsibility for ensuring it’s only accessed by authorized users.

Focusing on going live

There’s going to be a lot of pressure to bring your cloud online as soon as possible. Make sure your migration plan doesn’t simply hit the “on” switch once the data’s been migrated. Plan adequate testing to ensure that the applications work properly and your team knows how to support them before your cutover production systems to the cloud.

Prescient Solutions can help you keep your focus while you work through your transition to the cloud. Contact us to learn more about our Azure cloud services, including migration support and ongoing managed services.