Why and How Migration To Cloud Often Fails

Many companies adopt Cloud hoping that they can streamline operations, take away the headaches related to managing their IT, and reduce the burden on in-house IT staff. But recent surveys say those who have already moved to Cloud are not feeling any better.

According to a survey by NTT Communications, many CIOs are finding managing cloud vendors confusing and challenging. Another survey from ElasticHosts says CIOs are feeling dissatisfied with IT service providers.

In the NTT Communications survey, 38 per cent of respondents said Cloud is not living up to its potential in their organizations. This all comes at a time when the enterprise cloud market is expected to top $250 billion by 2017, up from $70 billion in 2015.

“Enterprises cannot get expected results if they do not check whether the application workloads running on their in-house IT infrastructure are suited for Cloud. Before signing the deal, IT service providers need to explain to their client the importance of redesigning applications,” says Ravi Srinivasan, senior strategic adviser with IT outsourcing advisory firm RampRate.

“For some companies, migration to Cloud has been successful. But some companies are yet to realize that their applications need to be redesigned for the Cloud. In some cases, companies can do that and in some cases, they cannot,” he added.

In other words, the process begins with examining existing IT capabilities and evaluating all IT-supported business functions to assess their compatibility with the Cloud. “But very few companies have built their application that is easily swappable,” Srinivasan said.

He says a vast majority of companies established in the past five years have built their IT infrastructure with migrating to cloud on mind. “They are doing well. Cloud is working well for them.”

Thanks to lack of preparation before shifting cloud, many enterprises are blaming their service providers. Many surveys suggest several companies have not been able to lessen their reliance on inhouse staff even after moving to cloud. In a recent survey by SANS, an information security analysis firm, 44 percent of respondents said their biggest challenge is that cloud providers don’t offer visibility needed to protect users and data.

In ElasticHosts’ survey, three in four respondents appeared to believe that the move to cloud has forced them to sacrifice service and support in some capacity, while a third insisted they have sacrificed the majority or all support by moving to the cloud.