9 Pitfalls of Cloud Migration and How to Protect Your Customer

Jo Peterson

Chuck Price

By Jo Peterson, Clarify360, and Chuck Price, Effectual

Every IT leader generally addresses four key areas when moving infrastructure to the cloud:

• Migration Preparation
• Specific Technical Consideration
• Target Cloud Environment Testing
• Production Cutover

These are the must-do’s, but what are the key things to avoid during a migration? As a trusted adviser to your clients, there are many ways you can provide value during this process and ultimately protect their best interests.

If your customer is just beginning their cloud journey, you’ll want to help them think through a number of technical, financial, cultural and process-based aspects of their transition.

Scroll through the slides below to learn the nine potential pitfalls you should critically consider when advising your client in their cloud migration.

Jo Peterson is the vice president of cloud services for Clarify360, a boutique sourcing and benchmarking consultancy focused on transforming technology into busines advantage. In addition to being the founding co-chair of Cloud Girls and serving on multiple provider advisory boards as well as the Channel Partners Editorial Advisory Board, Peterson is consistently ranked as a Top 100 Cloud Influencer by Rise Global and Top 100 Key Influencer in IoT by Global Data. Follow her on Twitter at @digitalcloudgal.

Chuck Price, co-founder and COO at Effectual, is a successful entrepreneur, business strategist and pioneer in cloud, cybersecurity and IT managed services. His professional passion lies in working with results-oriented business leaders helping them to develop digital transformation and cloud migration plans that lead to big wins on behalf of their customers, employees and shareholders. A deep technologist who also enjoys people, Price takes a servant-leader approach to sharing his more than 25 years of hands-on experience in leading corporate strategies that leverage human and technology capital in the development of high-growth opportunities. 

1. Lack of C-Level Sponsorship

Cloud is as much a cultural change as it is a technical change. Moving to the cloud can fundamentally shift the way a business operates in areas like budgeting, day-to-day operations, end-user productivity, talent acquisition and development.IT staff and managers will benefit from additional cloud training as a key investment in their long-term success. During the critical transformation phase of their efforts, consultants may also be needed to ensure IT understands how best to leverage new cloud capabilities and modernize applications in order to take full advantage of cloud services.These types of organizational changes will be most successful with appropriate executive sponsorship and buy-in. Help your IT leader be a better business partner by helping them think through both positive and potentially negative business impacts of moving to the cloud.  If the business differentiators, risks and key drivers aren’t clear and the changes in the business aren’t articulated to the businesses leadership, it could be a very bumpy road.