Top Obstacles to Overcome When Moving Data to the Cloud

A lot has been said and written about the benefits cloud computing can offer to businesses large and small, including improved scalability, greater collaboration efficiency, and better business continuity.

But unlocking these and other benefits isn’t possible without overcoming several major obstacles that any business is guaranteed to face when moving data to the cloud.

Top 5 Issues When Moving Data to the Cloud

1. Cost of Migration

Businesses that migrate data to the cloud often do so because they want to save money by reducing their in-house IT infrastructure and getting rid of the maintenance costs associated with it.

The cost of migration can, indeed, be recouped quickly, but the migration must be supported by a well-thought-out plan that reflects your business objectives and requirements while taking into consideration your current IT infrastructure.

For some businesses, it’s best to migrate their infrastructure and data piece by piece, but the same approach may not work nearly as well for other businesses.

What’s more, a full cloud migration doesn’t always have to be the ultimate goal. The hybrid cloud approach, which uses a mix of on-premises and public cloud services, combines the benefits (and disadvantages) of on-premises and cloud computing, making it the best option in many cases.

2. Cybersecurity and Compliance Concerns

Moving data to the cloud means relying on someone else for its security—a prospect many businesses are deeply uncomfortable with, and for a good reason.

The last thing you want is to experience a costly, reputation-damaging data breach because your cloud provider of choice hasn’t been able to secure your data properly.

Cybersecurity is an especially thorny issue for businesses in heavily regulated industries, such as healthcare and finance, where regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act require strict adherence to certain practices intended to safeguard sensitive data.

To protect data stored in the cloud and ensure compliance with all relevant regulations, you need to understand what you’re trying to protect and understand the threats you face. Only then can you choose a cloud provider capable of meeting your cybersecurity and compliance needs.

Learn how to overcome the challenge of cloud security with this guide tailored for small businesses.

3. Vendor Lock-in

The term vendor lock-in describes a situation when a customer becomes dependent on a single vendor for products and services while being unable to use a different vendor—at least not without major switching costs.

It goes without saying that vendor lock-in is not something you want to experience after migrating your data to the cloud.

You can avoid being tied to an uncompetitive cloud vendor by implementing a multi-cloud strategy. As its name suggests, the purpose of a multi-cloud strategy is to utilize multiple vendors based on their individual strengths.

While more difficult to implement correctly than a single-cloud strategy, the benefits of using two or more different cloud providers easily outweigh the extra effort required.

4. Internal Resistance

Some employees always resist change for a variety of different reasons, from simply being reluctant to try new things to not believing the change will bring the desired results.

Unfortunately, any internal resistance is a major obstacle that you need to overcome to successfully move data to the cloud. How? By directly addressing its sources using a multi-pronged approach that involves leadership buy-in, hands-on training, and intuitive cloud solutions.

We mention leadership buy-in first because that’s where you should start. By getting strong executive buy-in right from the start, you will find it much easier to drive successful adoption at the bottom, which you can do with hands-on training that clearly explains all new systems and processes in a language even employees who are not tech-savvy can understand.

Of course, it’s always much easier to explain how to use a cloud solution that’s intuitive in the first place, so usability should be an important factor when deciding between multiple solutions.

5. Lack of Technical Experience

Moving data to the cloud requires very specific technical skills and experience, and most small and medium-sized businesses don’t employ any IT professionals who have them.

Hiring the necessary IT talent typically isn’t an option as well because the demand for cloud experts greatly exceeds the supply, and large enterprises have driven salary expectations sky-high.

Fortunately, a cost-effective alternative does exist. You can partner with a managed service provider, like Teal, and let us help you overcome all obstacles described in this article when moving data to the cloud.

We can help you come up with a comprehensive cloud migration plan based on your business objectives, as well as your current IT infrastructure, and ensure its successful implementation.

Overcome Cloud Obstacles with Managed Services

For many businesses, moving data to the cloud is an excellent decision that can unlock many highly attractive benefits. Cloud migration can be a daunting task. So, it’s good that businesses don’t have to overcome the obstacles alone because there are managed service providers like Teal who are happy to provide the necessary skills and experience.

Teal offers responsive and secure managed IT services to SMBs nationally. Other services include:

If you’re interested in learning about our premier IT strategies, contact a Teal business technology advisor today.

Have an in-house IT team? We recommend they review these insights to help prepare your organization for a painless data migration to the cloud.