Common Cloud Migration Challenges and How to Overcome Them: Part 2

Optimize your digital transformation journey by preparing for every potential cloud migration challenge.

August 28, 2023 | By Vaividh Yasa

Cloud migration projects require time, care and resources to be completed efficiently. Setting yourself up for success means preparing for potential roadblocks and involving the right mix of stakeholders to help get the job done right. In this two-part series, we discuss the most common cloud migration challenges encountered during the migration process. Knowing what to look out for can help you avoid downtime.

If you missed the first part of this list, click here.

6. Disaster Recovery

Why it’s a problem area: Disaster recovery is unique in that it’s an area of expense that organizations need but hope they never have to use. Because of this, it’s often a bare minimum solution. Many organizations might even skip the step of having a backup plan for their cloud migration, and in a worst-case scenario, this could lead to critical data loss. From the perspective of time and expense, disaster recovery is also a key part of hitting your KPIs. Downtime can derail a major migration project if not resolved quickly, leading to higher costs and reduced productivity.

How to protect yourself: Avoid this potential cloud migration problem by making the appropriate investment in your backup and disaster recovery solution. If your data is valuable to your business, you should be eager to protect it. A thorough disaster recovery solution must be comprehensive, taking all potential failure scenarios into account. Implement cloud-based backup tools and allocate resources to ensure they are routinely tested for efficiency and accuracy. It’s more cost-effective to have the solution and not need it than to assume you’ll be unscathed without it.

7. Vendor Management

Why it’s a problem area: Changing cloud vendors is not like changing web browsers. It’s a big decision that comes with financial burdens, potential work disruptions and contract negotiations. Organizations need to be careful to avoid vendor lock-in, especially if they make use of applications that may not integrate with all platforms. The last thing you want to do is commit to a vendor, go through with the migration and then find out a business-critical integration with one of your analytics tools is incompatible with your new environment.

How to protect yourself: Engage stakeholders from all affected departments in the provider selection process. This will give them the chance to ensure that any third-party applications they use will continue to operate without disruption. You should also establish clear communication channels with any provider you are considering working with to ensure feedback and service requests are responded to with urgency. It’s important to know as much as possible before making any decisions. The vendor you choose should be responsive, open to questions and willing to offer solutions to potential roadblocks.

8. Application Optimization

Why it’s a problem area: Some applications perform better in certain environments. In more extreme cases, some applications are incompatible with or unavailable on certain platforms. If you’re about to enter a contract with a new cloud provider, you need to make sure that doing so won’t break a business-critical integration! Whether it’s an analytics platform or library versioning tool, you want to avoid a situation where you will need to build a workaround or find a new application to perform the same function. Otherwise, you will be required to spend time, money and resources on what could have been a completely avoidable situation.

How to protect yourself: In order to mitigate this cloud migration challenge, perform an audit of all your business-critical applications to ensure your new cloud environment will be able to meet the necessary requirements. If any applications need to be replaced, connect with stakeholders to find out if they can adapt new tools in a reasonable time frame.

9. Data Management

Why it’s a problem area: It is critical for businesses in all sectors to be protective of their data. Managing access to that data at the user level and taking care to meet data sovereignty requirements can be a complicated process. Oversight in this area of your migration journey could cause serious issues down the line. You might end up creating weak points in your security for bad actors to exploit if you aren’t thorough with your access management. Failure to adhere to any data sovereignty requirements could also land you in legal trouble, limiting your ability to do business in certain geographic areas.

How to protect yourself: Conduct a thorough assessment of your organization’s data sovereignty requirements. Identify any data that cannot be stored or processed outside of certain geographic areas; your vendor choice may be affected by their ability to provide solutions that meet your needs.

10. Testing

Why it’s a problem area: It’s not that organizations don’t perform tests; it’s that they often don’t test enough. Testing gives you the opportunity to plan for every possible scenario, but most stakeholders are too eager to get the show on the road and end up performing only perfunctory tests.

How to protect yourself: Consider all potential failure scenarios; one test won’t cut it. Build a nonproduction environment to thoroughly test your migration process. This will give you the opportunity to ensure it works as expected or solve for any errors that may arise. Regularly review and optimize your testing procedures to ensure they are effective.