Are you a cloud skeptic, or do you work with any who might be? Information security, losing control, costs, and change in general – are all very common fears of cloud migration, but what happens if we put facts above these fears? Find out how you can turn cloud skeptics (including yourself) into believers and help them better embrace the cloud without apprehension as we address the top 3 fears we hear.
Fear #1 – Fear of the Unknown
There’s the old saying, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.” This is often the case when people are contemplating a cloud migration. What you have right now is comfortable yet limiting in terms of driving digital transformations. Even still, you reluctantly stay with the status quo and unintentionally slow business growth and expansion. This may be manageable in the short term, but in the long term, it has damaging effects on building business endurance and gaining a competitive edge. While your counterparts have employed scalable modern cloud computing, you’re wasting precious resources fighting with your existing on-premise IT infrastructure and stifling bottom-line productivity.
Sound familiar? This is what we call fear of the unknown, and it’s a common feeling when thinking about moving to the cloud. Messing with a system is scary stuff. People tend to think that you shouldn’t change what is working. Unfortunately, in our tech-forward world, this is a one-way ticket to disaster. Technology adoption involves change. There’s no way around it. It requires a deliberate decision to continually improve products, services, and processes so that you remain competitive when technology evolves. Just because something has worked for the company in the past, doesn’t mean it will continue to work in the future. The key is changing the company, team, or person’s mindset (perhaps your own) and embracing new technology.
Fear #2 – It’s Too Expensive
The costs of migrating to the cloud can put people off, but when comparing apples to apples, it works out pretty reasonable. A lot of the time, pricing of the cloud is complicated and sometimes the calculation isn’t accurate, or you don’t know what you need so price out something that doesn’t fit your needs. This is where a partner can really help by making sure you’re company is pricing out what it actually needs.
One huge cost benefit with the cloud is since you’re “renting” it (usually monthly) you don’t need to pay for upfront costs of the physical hardware and software that typically comes with onsite equipment. Even if you’ve already spent that and have the equipment, the company no longer needs to maintain it or replace it as it ages or needs repairs. One notable example of how much savings a business can expect from a cloud migration is from The Office of Recovery Services, a Utah Department of Human Services division. They were able to decrease their operational costs by 37% when they moved to the cloud.
When talking about money, the average cloud server pricing is about $400 monthly for one server, to $15,000 monthly for the entire back-office infrastructure. That’s quite a broad range and we understand that makes it difficult to determine your budget. So, how much should expect to pay when you’re in the cloud? The bad news is we, unfortunately, don’t have a definite answer for you in this article. The good news is we can help you get there as it depends on your business structure, current challenges, and the goals you’re hoping to achieve. Ensuring flexibility and scalability is also very important and something we plan for all our clients thinking of making the big move. You want to be able to scale your business quickly when that time comes. If you shift your servers to the cloud, then you can easily scale up or down resources (i.e. – memory, assignments, CPU, etc.), that you need to support the servers.
That’s why having a knowledgeable and experienced partner (like us!) can help immensely when figuring out if you can afford the cloud. We know the right questions to ask, and we know what to look for. We’ll learn about your vision, your budget, and variables so that we can lay out the different pricing models and find the perfect setup that works both now and down the road. Figuring out the costs of the cloud might be a time-consuming process, but when done right, companies can save an average of 15% on all IT costs by moving to the cloud.
Fear #3 – There’s Too Much Risk
Costs aren’t the only concern. There are also legitimate risks involved when moving to the cloud. There’s not a lot of tried and tested. To reduce the risk, hiring a strategic partner helps. They’ll help guide you through setting up the cloud environment of your dreams. A poorly designed cloud leaves you destined for problems. You wouldn’t build a house without some help, so migrating to the cloud shouldn’t be any different. There’s security, scaling, performance, type of cloud, sizing, automation, and so much more to think about when setting up your cloud environment.
It makes sense to be afraid to migrate your entire network to something new. Our team unfortunately sees bad cloud specifications happen all the time and we’ve taken over client cloud environments because they were too slow and not working properly for the company. Hiring a skilled partner from the get-go to walk you through this process lowers risks and the possibility of an expensive fix later.
Fear #4 – Is It Really Secure?
The final common fear – “What if we get hacked?” This is a quick answer – cloud computing is just as secure as on-prem software, if not more so, BUT only when it’s managed correctly. For example, Microsoft Azure provides an on-demand scalable and flexible cloud platform that is very secure on its own. However, users still need to take basic precautions, like creating strong passwords and implementing backup recovery options. A cloud migration isn’t a decision to take lightly. Having all your ducks in the row before migrating is essential to a successful deployment. There are a lot of important points to consider and decisions to make beforehand, which is what our cloud-managed services team is happy to help you with
