Ad Image

6 Devastating Cloud Migration Mistakes You Need to Avoid

6 Devastating Cloud Migration Mistakes You Need to Avoid

6 Devastating Cloud Migration Mistakes You Need to Avoid

When your business integrates the cloud into its infrastructure, it will be eager to migrate its data to the cloud as soon as possible. However, there are several mistakes you can make during the cloud migration process that could be costly to your organization. If these mistakes aren’t corrected, your business could face burdensome financial costs, open your data to security threats, and even risk failure to comply with data regulations.

Knowing and acknowledging that you’ve made a mistake in your cloud migration process is the first step – taking action to correct those mistakes comes next. How do you identify when these errors have been made? What can you do to stop their effect from damaging your business? Is there a way to avoid these mistakes before they happen? Below, we’ve compiled six of the most common cloud migration mistakes that businesses make and how you can prevent them from ruining your enterprise.

If you want to help make the cloud migration process easier for your enterprise, you should consider a managed service provider. Our MSP Buyer’s Guide contains profiles on the top cloud managed service providers for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as questions you should ask vendors and yourself before buying. We also offer an MSP Vendor Map that outlines those vendors in a Venn diagram to make it easy for you to select potential providers.

Download Link to Cloud MSP Vendor Map

Migrating all your data at once

Cloud migration is a process that could take months – potentially years – to fully complete, depending on how much data is stored on your enterprise. That’s because successful cloud migration should be done in stages, migrating over specific bits of data before others. Some enterprises might look at that estimated timeline and wince. Why can’t you simply put all your data on the cloud right away and get it over with?

When you’re migrating to the cloud, you more than likely have little to no experience with that provider’s cloud solutions. That makes it all the more likely that your enterprise will mess something up when bringing your data onto the cloud. Your organization needs to plan out its migration to the cloud in phases; at its core, this should consist of migrating non-essential or test data first, then moving on to more business-critical or sensitive data. This way, if you make mistakes in your cloud migration early on, you won’t be putting critical data at risk. Then, when your enterprise becomes more familiar with your cloud deployment, it can start moving over more essential data.

Assuming all cloud environments are the same

You may assume that every cloud environment is more or less the same, so migrating from one cloud to another won’t be a big deal. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Every cloud vendor designs their cloud environment in a different way, specializing in different functions and capabilities for their deployment. Therefore, you should never blindly migrate data from one cloud to another without becoming familiar with your new cloud environment. Otherwise, your migration process will hit a brick wall while your enterprise scrambles to reconfigure data to fit the new cloud.

Migrating data and workflows without a business purpose

You shouldn’t migrate something to the cloud just because you can. If your enterprise adopts the cloud into its infrastructure, it should have a clearly-defined business purpose for doing so. That holds true for cloud migration as well; your enterprise should have a reason to migrate its data and processes onto the cloud. Cloud solutions have grown exceedingly powerful over the past decade, and it’s possible to perform just about any business task in the cloud. That doesn’t mean, however, that you should perform them in the cloud. Your team should evaluate the costs and benefits that moving a workflow or a collection of data onto your cloud environment; then, it can determine whether or not the migration will be worth it.

Our MSP Buyer’s Guide contains profiles on the top cloud managed service providers for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as questions you should ask vendors and yourself before buying.

Not configuring your data and apps for the cloud

When you move data or projects onto a cloud environment, you can’t just put something onto the cloud and expect it to work immediately. Depending on your file types and the cloud environment you’re using, you might need to reconfigure your data to work inside the cloud. Running an application in the cloud, for example, might require more computing power than your cloud provider gives to you. Be sure to test any applications or projects you put into the cloud to ensure that they’re working properly.

Not projecting the cost of cloud migration

Cloud migration can be a costly process for your business. Even if the end result is ultimately worth your investment, you might run into unexpected spending during the migration period. You need to factor in the ultimate cost of running your data and processes on your cloud environment. However, you also need to consider the cost of making your data unavailable during the migration process, if applicable. Whatever the cost will be, your enterprise should have a rough estimate beforehand – just in case it’s dealt a financial blow they weren’t prepared for.

Forgetting about cloud security

There’s never a time when keeping your data secure shouldn’t be a top priority, even when migrating resources to the cloud. You can’t just assume that the cloud environment you’re moving your data to will automatically be secure. Though cloud providers integrate several services and policies to secure their cloud environment, you’re responsible for cloud security as well. The specific responsibilities for your enterprise and the cloud vendor will vary, and should be outlined in the provider’s service level agreement (SLA).


Running a cloud environment and need help managing the cloud services you use? Our MSP Buyer’s Guide contains profiles on the top cloud managed service providers for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as questions you should ask vendors and yourself before buying. We also offer an MSP Vendor Map that outlines those vendors in a Venn diagram to make it easy for you to select potential providers.

Check us out on Twitter for the latest in Enterprise Cloud news and developments!

Download Link to Managed Service Providers Buyers Guide

Share This

Related Posts