What are the biggest challenges when it’s time to migrate to the cloud?

Staff training to plug skills gap poses as one of the biggest challenge for companies wishing to make the switch

Up to 72 per cent of IT leaders believe it is vital for businesses to make the change to stay competitive

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What are the biggest challenges when it’s time to migrate to the cloud?

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Published: 4:10pm, 21 Feb 2019Updated: 11:19am, 6 Jun 2019

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Cloud platforms and applications have become an integral part of the IT infrastructure of enterprises around the world.

A report by Oracle and Longitude Research shows that 72 per cent of IT leaders from 13 countries see moving their applications, DevOps, and workloads to the cloud as being vital to staying competitive.

As new technologies develop and bring about the digital transformation of industries, we have witnessed how these can bring about greater revenue and competitiveness. And it has become critical that small companies jump on the bandwagon to reap the benefits of technology and become more competitive in today’s ever-changing business landscape.

Unsurprisingly, the public sector has also taken notice of this trend. As part of its continuing efforts to turn Hong Kong into a “smart city”, the Hong Kong government has reaffirmed its plans to revamp its IT systems into a cloud infrastructure platform by 2020. This would allow it to lower IT costs and deliver digital government services at scale.

Yet despite the excitement over cloud technology, a significant number of businesses have yet to migrate to the cloud, or are currently experiencing problems with their migration owing to a number of obstacles.

Xero’s latest research shows that only 26 per cent and 17 per cent of businesses have adopted cloud-based accounting software in Singapore and Hong Kong, respectively. This is significantly lower than their counterparts in Australia and New Zealand, which are leading with an average of 40 per cent cloud accounting adoption.

Common migration challenges

While the availability of cloud tools and platforms has made moving to the cloud more convenient than ever, the actual migration process presents numerous challenges.

Here are the top three common challenges faced by businesses when migrating to the cloud.

1. Need for IT training to address skills gaps: Not all IT departments possess the expertise in specialised areas such as cloud security, virtualisation and software architectures, which are necessary to successfully migrate to the cloud.

Depending on the size of your business, you may not have an IT team at all, but just one all-around tech person. According to the London School of Economics, this has left IT organisations scrambling to hire talent with cloud knowledge, taking more than twice as much time to fill cloud computing roles compared with other jobs. This skills gap has also caused 40 per cent of IT leaders to put their cloud migration on hold, McAfee has reported.

2. Conflict with existing systems and cloud platforms: Organisations using old, legacy software with little or no vendor support are often held back from migrating to the cloud because of concerns about poor integration.

While it isn’t ideal, a local application that can’t be moved to the cloud can operate in a hybrid environment, remaining on-premises but interacting with a public/private cloud counterpart. This was the solution applied by 43 per cent of organisations surveyed by IDG Communications last year.

3. Plugging security gaps between old and new platforms: A poorly executed cloud migration can present security gaps between old systems and cloud applications. This and human error were at the centre of last year’s massive SingHealth data breach in Singapore, which happened after cyber attackers exploited a vulnerability between a server farm at Singapore General Health and SingHealth’s cloud-based Sunrise Clinical Manager database server.

While some organisations, particularly small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), may think that they’re too small to be the target of a cyberattack, it’s this same relaxed view about security that makes them susceptible to data breaches.

McAfee notes that 36 per cent of organisations admit to having migrated to the cloud without first having the necessary security skills and framework in place.

How to make a successful move…

The key to a successful cloud migration is to recognise the above risks and challenges from the beginning. This will then allow you to strategically mitigate the pitfalls and reap the full benefits of cloud adoption.

1. Ease transition with staff development

Skills development has overtaken security as the primary challenge when migrating to the cloud, according to Oracle and Longitude Research. Even if you have the resources to hire a consultant, it’s still a good idea to have in-house IT personnel who know how to create, evaluate and implement a cloud strategy.

At the same time, however, any training should not strain your IT team’s current workload. Technical documentation is obviously important, but quick bursts of hands-on training tend to be a better way to keep employees engaged and interested in the learning process. Amazon Web Services, for example, offers free digital training that lets users learn at their own pace.

From there, your IT team can then pass on their knowledge to other employees. This will ensure that your general workforce has the confidence to work with the interface of a new cloud platform, leading to faster onboarding and a lower likelihood of productivity disruption.

2. Emphasise organisation-wide participation

The process of migrating to the cloud is as much a cultural change as it is a business transformation. Any consultant who has led a cloud migration journey will tell you that to change management and cultural issues are two of the biggest factors that either catalyse or inhibit a company’s path to success.

Even if most of the workload falls on your IT personnel, compartmentalising the migration process ignores a crucial opportunity to get multiple teams working together. After all, anything the IT team builds will ultimately be used by the entire organisation.

3. Highlight the ‘why’ to overcome resistance

The first thing on many employees’ minds when they’re made to undergo training for a new project or tool is “What’s in it for me?”.

So, it’s important to begin with the “why” when talking to staff about cloud migration, not just from a business perspective, but from each employee’s personal view as well.

Technology adoption should not be perceived with fear or scepticism, but rather, employees should understand how it can increase their productivity, add on relevant skills to ensure they remain future-ready and minimise time spent on mundane tasks.

Understanding the organisation’s “why” is easy. Individual employees, however, need more time because they each have different career motivations. Only by talking to staff about their concerns, apprehensions and suggestions can you win their hearts and minds.

4. Create cloud usage and data security policy

A cloud usage and data security policy identifies who has access to data and sets procedural guidelines to ensure accountability and security throughout the migration process. Comprehensive policies will also come with several checks and balances to prevent a data breach and other cybersecurity attacks.

While the end-point of cloud data belongs to users, the actual data being delivered is still owned by the organisation. A cloud usage and data security policy outlines everyone’s responsibilities, allowing users to be aware of their actions when accessing internal information. A policy will also delineate personal data from corporate data.

How can migration help you?

Moving to the cloud is no longer a question of if or when. Now is the time to plan your migration strategy and think about how cloud solutions can help your organisation achieve specific strategic and tactical objectives.

While much has been said about cloud technology and its ability to reduce time spent on routine tasks and lower IT costs, there’s no denying that cloud migration can be a Herculean task for any company, be it an SME or a large enterprise.

It’s an initiative that comes with several unique challenges, but none that you can’t overcome with careful planning and a willingness to invest time and resources.

Learn more on the Xero website

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