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Not every cloud is made for your business and understanding that is vital

Cloud solution vendors would have you believe that the cloud is simple and cost effective and while that is the case in some instances, properly deploying a cloud solution requires work.

Being able to spin up capacity when needed or deploy environments that a particular project requires is what makes the cloud great. Flexibility and agility in a business can be make or break, as we learned throughout 2020, and that’s what makes the cloud so attractive.

But, as deal solutions manager at T-Systems South Africa – Andre Schwan – explains, a hasty migration to the cloud can do more harm than good.

For instance, putting all of your virtual eggs in one digital vendor’s server farm may seem like a great idea from an interoperability stand-point, but this could hurt in the future.

“It’s easy to get ‘locked in’ with a specific vendor due to the sheer weight of your migrated applications. It becomes difficult to get that data out and to change your solution halfway through a project if you didn’t design for a multi-cloud environment from the beginning,” explains Schwan.

There also needs to be consistency in your cloud adoption according to Schwan. For instance, if your IT team isn’t aware of the cloud solution’s limitations and security architecture, pitfalls will soon become an annoyance and a costly annoyance at that.

But before you even consider vendors and solutions, it’s worth asking the question, “why am I moving to cloud?”.

“It comes down to identifying the correct applications and understanding the workflow and the business processes behind moving them to the cloud – it’s not just a case of lift and shift and business goes on as usual,” specialised sales executive at T-Systems South Africa, Grant Somerset, explains.

“Then there is also the cost of rewriting applications so they are cloud-ready. Often these costs can be so high that it’s not feasible, so companies opt for private cloud solutions to keep these applications on premises,” adds Somerset.

This rewriting of applications might even differ between cloud providers and then interoperability could stymie your progress.

Perhaps the most important reason for being deeply involved in cloud solution deployment is for when things go wrong. This makes having a diverse team of experts who are a part of the journey so pivotal to a successful migration to or from the cloud.

Schwan and Somerset both agree that a poorly planned cloud migration, where an organisation has not spent the time upfront to devise a proper business strategy for it and then supported it with an architecture that takes into account the business requirements, could result in the organisation becoming “stuck” in the cloud.

And in a time where being stuck can break a business, it’s probably best to be as careful as possible with cloud migration decisions.

[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]

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