We believe there are many reasons to migrate your organisation’s applications to the cloud, not least of which are cost savings, streamlined operations, redeployment of resources, reskilling of your internal teams and talent retention.
In this blog, I answer the five most common questions I get asked about moving applications to the cloud, so you can make an informed decision about whether it’s the right thing for your organisation.
1. Is it secure and where is my data?
“Is it secure?” is one of the most commonly asked questions about the cloud. But as the cloud has become universal in organisations, the nature of the question has changed.
Every year, major cloud providers like Amazon and Microsoft spend billions to make their cloud services stable, robust and secure. Security measures and compliance certifications are available for all to see, and Microsoft’s cloud offering is as secure as it gets in terms of compliance, governance and physical security.
The result? Today, almost everyone accepts that the cloud is secure. The conversation now is less around how secure it is and more around data control. It’s essential that organisations understand where their data lives, where it may go and who can access it in order to feel comfortable with moving to the cloud.
A lack of understanding around how the cloud works is a barrier to adoption for many organisations. In the UK, law firms are amongst some of the most cautious adopters of cloud solutions, largely because of questions about where confidential client data will reside and who can access it.
There needs to be an understanding that, by its very nature, the cloud exists in multiple locations – and your data can too. Azure, for example, for resilience can have multiple copies of data in multiple locations. And this conversation isn’t always an IT-led discussion; it needs the business to decide in which country their data should be reside, and whether they are comfortable with it potentially leaving UK soil. The cloud gives customers choice here, different services having different options about where data is stored, but it’s important that well informed decisions are made in this regard.
Organisations need to know what they are letting themselves in for and understand how data will be stored and accessed which needs a complex, but not impossible, discussion about trust and understanding. In our experience, anyone who truly understands the options and how the cloud works has been confident in making an informed decision based on facts not fear.
2. Will all my IT staff be out of work/redundant?
Generally, there isn’t a direct correlation between adopting cloud services and IT staff being let go. We prefer to see this as freeing up IT staff to focus on more strategic tasks.
Whether they’re in retail, manufacturing, healthcare or any other sector, businesses are trying to be ‘the best’ and provide the best service to their customers. IT should enable them to do that. It should be a supporter and enabler for a business to do its job and operate at its highest level. And for organisations that are held back by inefficient, outdated IT systems, embracing the cloud is one way to make improvements.
Few organisations today choose to use physical servers; they are costly, require office space and need people to maintain and manage them. Solutions like O365 and Exchange Online are making delivery of common IT services easier, better and lower cost, and like it or not, the requirement for on-premise skills will reduce as cloud adoption becomes the new norm. As IT evolves, the skillset of IT teams needs to evolve with it, or face being left behind.
Traditional Exchange Server and the move to Exchange Online is a perfect example of the cloud enabling organisations to be ‘always current’ and move away from the classic 3-4-year major upgrade cycle with on-premise systems. The problems associated with these upgrade cycles is a large factor in why some legacy systems are allowed to go stale and not keep pace with business requirements. In 2020, with so many cloud advantages, it’s hard to imagine an IT team not well versed in solutions like Microsoft Office 365.
Cloud migration, where it is delivering improved productivity and user experience also has the potential to assist an organisation to attract and retain talent. Employees are an organisation’s most valuable and expensive asset. Finding talent is expensive, and not all acquisitions work out. Give your people rubbish IT or fail to keep up with the pace of change, and they’ll quickly become frustrated. Giving your teams the tools to do their jobs effectively – whether cloud or otherwise – means they’ll be the best versions of themselves and deliver the best for your customers.
3. Scalability: how does cloud allow businesses to scale up or down as needed?
There’s no doubt that the cloud gives businesses options that they didn’t have before.
