Navigating cloud migration: Top 5 factors for success

1. Directly address people’s concerns

Technology leaders see the appeal of the cloud, but not everyone will feel the same way – concerns about roles, skills, and job security will be simmering under the surface. Finance execs may not necessarily share your enthusiasm about elastic technology resources given this can also lead to difficult-to-budget costs.

Demonstrate compassion by proactively talking about their concerns and finding solutions to them.

As a lead cloud consulting firm, Sourced Group, an Amdocs Company, ran into this problem for a client during their migration process. In response to employees’ concerns, Sourced has implemented extensive training initiatives to upskill the existing team.

Sourced was able to connect stakeholders with the migration objective by being transparent about the advantages of cloud technology, such as increased performance and less downtime.

2. Project your vision for the future

It’s your job to create a picture for the future that will be delivered along with cloud migration. You won’t be able to make your dreams come true without effective communication.

Communicate the vision in a way that allows everyone to understand the benefit of the project to the organisation and its customers and how the team can contribute to its success.

Sourced’s proficiency in this area was on display when it facilitated the cloud migration of a large financial institution. Sourced helped build the story of how it would be an exciting career opportunity for workers and highlighted the growth in professions like Site Reliability Engineers (SREs).

This method guaranteed that in addition to technical considerations, the migration strategy incorporated thorough training in both skill and role development.

3. Make sure not to overpromise

Misconceptions about cloud migration sometimes stem from overly optimistic projections of savings and return on investment.

It’s important to start out by giving people a better idea of the magnitude of the change and the work that will be required.

Sourced’s expertise was put to use in one client engagement by clarifying the many nuanced benefits that cloud migration offers to business stakeholders. Sourced successfully managed expectations beyond only cost savings by placing an emphasis on enhanced quality, agility, and the capacity to attract top technical personnel.

This research helped stakeholders understand why engineering and architectural improvements are necessary for cloud migration to reach its full potential.

4. Leverage the power of DevSecOps in your engineering workflows

Implement Development, Security and Operations (DevSecOps) techniques within your cloud pipeline, as this will provide your teams the power to fully make use of the cloud.

By automating processes and embracing ‘zero trust’ concepts, this integration both allows for much more rapid development while guaranteeing security.

Sourced’s commitment to DevSecOps integration is demonstrated by its work with a global media conglomerate. The client benefited from the speedy and secure infrastructure and application upgrades made possible by the established cloud best practices and pipeline development expert team.

This not only improved the company’s responsiveness, but also set it up to compete for the best technical minds in the industry by means of cloud-native initiatives.

5. Start using agile now; don’t wait until after cloud conversion

An agile workflow is essential to take advantage of cloud features and building this nimbleness within the organisation is important even before the resources are migrated from the data centre to cloud platforms.

Becoming familiar with easy deployment and faster time-to-market will allow the business to accelerate its workflow practices and hit the ground running once it has access to the full cloud feature set.

Sourced worked with a large retailer to help them successfully implement agile approaches. Sourced helped their customer make regular course corrections in their cloud migration strategy by adopting agile concepts and guaranteeing continual progress. The method was well received by their team which agreed that cloud migrations and new software development initiatives had similar complexity.

Leverage experienced guidance

Don’t learn by trial and error – partner with a reliable cloud expert, such as Sourced to take advantage of their knowledge of many previous successful cloud migrations. With their knowledge, your company will be better prepared to reap the benefits of its cloud investments in terms of both people and processes.

Learn how you can avoid cloud migration failure here.