Over the last years, we have seen accelerated digital transition and cloud adoption across all sectors. The main objectives are saving on costs, enhancing customer experiences, and optimizing business processes. However, the transition journey to the cloud with Microsoft Azure integration is never a walk in the park, considering its complexity and compatibility issues.
In fact, about 30% of cloud transition initiatives fail. But why do they fail? How can organizations speed up their digital transformation to the cloud with Microsoft Azure integration services? Keep reading to find out.
Why Do Organizations Fail When Transitioning to the Cloud?
The cloud provides a new way of getting things done. Cloud migration requires various tools, processes, and skills like any other initiative. However, many firms apply existing capabilities and conventional practices to the cloud, leading to failure. Let’s look at 4 issues that lead to unsuccessful cloud integration.
1. Underrating Technology Complexity
Chief Information Officers (CIOs) often underrate the technical complexity of successful digital migration to the cloud. The cloud supports a highly distributed, event-powered microservices architecture capable of powering intelligent applications. Despite these benefits, companies often struggle to take full responsibility for the cloud’s infrastructure management.
Businesses strain to manage hybrid environments as they add a layer of complication. As a result, they eventually fail to realize the value of cloud migration.
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2. IT and Business Misalignment
Many cloud programs are facilitated by IT companies. However, the significant cloud value is usually unlocked within business functions and operations. Therefore, businesses need to change how they operate to attain the desired value.
CIOs rarely position themselves as the drivers of the cloud transition. On the other hand, executives need to take responsibility for cloud integration programs as they are not conversant with the cloud platform. This gap leads to misalignment between the business and IT goals and the eventual failure of the cloud transition initiative.
3. Poor Financial Discipline
Most companies often need more financial management abilities to govern and measure cloud value. In fact, less than 40% of all cloud integration initiatives have a well-expressed financial and business case. Some tech leaders are less experienced in technology economics. Therefore, they need a clearer understanding of how cloud transition decisions affect economic outcomes.
The inability to accurately calculate the financial requirements and implications of cloud initiatives harms the success of cloud migration.
4. Over-indexing on Company
CIOs recognize the need to modify their operation models to enable them to work in the cloud environment. However, they often regroup and reshuffle resources instead of breaking down barriers, handling inefficiencies, and significantly changing how their teams work.
The only way to reap actual value from the cloud is to invest in the teams involved and ensure they have the necessary tools and technologies to operate. Therefore, if companies treat cloud transition as “just another change,” the cloud initiative fails.
A Guide to Accelerating Cloud Transition with Microsoft Azure Integration
Having looked at the possible pitfalls in cloud migration, it’s good to know how companies can quickly shift their services to a cloud environment. We know leaders want to enjoy the benefits of cloud technology as soon as possible. But don’t let that push you to make hasty decisions when transitioning to the cloud – of course, you’ll fail.
The following are some steps to facilitate a faster cloud transition with Microsoft Azure integration:
1. Define Your Strategy
This step involves multiple actions, including:
- Defining and documenting your motivations. Draft a detailed report on the reasons for cloud transition and what you want to achieve.
- Involving and aligning stakeholders. Develop a center of excellence (COE) involving all primary stakeholders. Doing so streamlines and accelerates cloud migration because the cloud migration meets the organization’s goals and enlists broad support from all organizational levels.
- Engaging a cloud migration service provider. Expand your cloud skillset by involving a managed cloud migration expert to minimize cloud transitioning risks.
2. Plan for the Cloud Migration
Planning for cloud transitioning can save you time and minimize potential risks involved in the process. To perfectly plan for your cloud migration, consider the following:
- Find and evaluate your company’s infrastructure, databases, and apps. Gain insights into the interdependencies using automated cloud transition tools. Assess the company’s on-premise environment and inventory the infrastructure to determine performance metrics, workload cost estimates, and sizing guidance.
- Create a business case for cloud transitioning. Assess the potential cost savings associated with migrating to Microsoft Azure.
- Develop a holistic plan that accounts for timelines, resources, milestones, workload priorities, and funding.
3. Get Prepared for the Move
Build your cloud skills and prepare the application development and IT team by providing upfront training. Once the teams are ready, establish your workload’s landing zones and review the best practices for Microsoft Azure readiness.
4. Transition Your Workloads to the Microsoft Azure Cloud
Use centralized tools such as Azure Migrate to make the cloud transitioning easier, transparent, and efficient. Also, it is crucial to evaluate, optimize, and migrate workloads iteratively to ensure they are ready to match the production demands.
5. Modernize Your Data and Apps
Modernize your applications and databases iteratively by rebuilding, refactoring, and re-architecting them with cloud-native technologies. Doing so will enhance speed, productivity, and scalability and accelerate developer velocity.
6. Control and Secure the Workloads
Security is of utmost significance in the cloud. Quickly identify and mitigate threats using threat protection tools such as Azure Security Center. Also, you can quickly create and scale your workloads and applications while maintaining governance, thanks to Azure policies that govern cloud resources and subscriptions.
7. Manage and Optimize Costs of Your Cloud.
Congratulations! You’ve made it to the cloud. So, what’s next? Familiarize yourself with the offers and tools from the cloud service provider. You can use solutions such as Azure Arc. to manage your apps, databases, and workloads across the hybrid environment. What’s more, you can actively track workload performance, thanks to Microsoft Azure’s real-time trends and insights.
Final Insights
Digital transitioning to the cloud with Microsoft Azure integration unlocks a world of endless opportunities for businesses. However, the cloud migration journey is never easy, especially if one or more things are done incorrectly. But with the correct steps provided, you can significantly accelerate the digital transition to the cloud with Microsoft Azure integration. Say goodbye to cloud transitioning issues and start reaping the numerous benefits of the cloud platform.
The post How to Accelerate Digital Transition to the Cloud with Microsoft Azure Integration first appeared on IEEE Computer Society.
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