Velostrata: Partners Increasingly In Demand For Cloud Migrations

Companies increasingly are seeking out ways to eliminate risk in their cloud migration by turning to experienced partners who can help them connect the dots across the entire migration life cycle.

That’s according to a new study announced by Velostrata and conducted by Dimensional Research. More than 200 IT professionals responded to an online survey representing companies of different sizes and varied industries.

Velostrata’s Issy Ben-Shaul

Issy Ben-Shaul, Velostrata’s CEO, tells Channel Partners that partners can greatly improve margins on their cloud migration projects.

“They can do this by simultaneously reducing the labor intensity associated with conventional approaches and accelerating the speed of cloud migration,” he said. “Furthermore, with 89 percent of those surveyed reporting they are satisfied with the expertise their partners are providing, the strategy is clearly starting to pay dividends to customers migrating to the cloud, and customer retention and loyalty to a channel is also poised to improve.”

The most surprising aspect of the study was the “sheer number of timeline or budgeting issues despite the surge in cloud migration,” Ben-Shaul said.

“While 96 percent of participants are currently migrating applications to the cloud, we discovered that over half of all projects are delayed and over budget: 57 percent of application projects take longer to complete than planned, and nearly half exceed the application migration project budget,” he said.

More than 50 percent of companies now are relying on the expertise of technology partners during their cloud migration projects, primarily due to a lack of in-house expertise, to overcome the challenges they are encountering, according to the study. Moreover, they are specifically seeking out partners to accelerate their projects to meet budget and deadline projections. And the areas where customers are looking for the most assistance are planning and strategy, application identification and execution of the migration.

With more than half of cloud migration projects still facing significant challenges, companies will seek to avoid piecemeal tools and go-it-alone, in-house strategies, and instead embrace an approach including technology partners and purpose-built migration platforms that help them navigate the entire cloud migration life cycle, according to the study.

“They understand that the faster their apps are in the cloud, the sooner they reap the benefits, but the process can initially be daunting when facing the prospect of tackling it in-house,” Ben-Shaul said.