In the last decade cloud migration is a challenge that has been ranked the highest by enterprises around the globe. Migrating mission critical application and huge amounts of data from one environment to the other can be a complex and challenging process in itself. As a result, most businesses choose to partner with a trusted advisor or expert, such as a managed services provider who can expertly drive the migration from planning to execution. Over 60% of enterprises rely on their managed service provider to develop a cloud migration strategy. And 70% used their managed cloud services provider to actually manage the migration project.

Here, we will discuss the common challenges enterprises face during cloud migration and how a Cloud managed service provider can make all the difference.

1) Cloud Migration causes business disruption

Cloud Migration is a complex process and even the smallest errors can cause significant downtimes. This leads to higher costs and longer timelines for the project. When migrating business critical applications such as Oracle or SAP, there is little room for such errors or missteps. Any cloud migration exercise that runs past the planned outage time, will need extra efforts from end users to complete the pending business transactions and will cause a revenue loss due to the prolonged outage. Besides, online migrations may require additional network capacity and this can disrupt the execution of other workloads.

How a Cloud Managed Services Provider Can Help

• Cloud Managed service provider should bring the right combination of deep cloud expertise and automated tooling to the table. Their professional services should help you plan every aspect of your migration step by step.
• The right provider will ensure that every step is documented in runbooks and executed appropriately before a cutover to a cloud environment occurs.
• Cloud Managed Service providers also offer workload and data redundancy and failover environments, which can be spun up in moments if something unexpected happens.
• Finally, with pre-integrated DevOps tools that handle tasks like workload discovery and mapping, DNS transfers and data formatting, the risk of human error impacting the migration is minimized.
• Cloud Managed service providers should have a proven migration methodology that includes the right amount of testing and proven templates to use when creating a migration plan.
• They should also be able to provide the leadership and governance help required for a successful, smooth migration.

2) High bandwidth requirements

Large data transfers—especially for critical workloads or databases usually require high capacity for a short time. This is often difficult to procure in a cost effective way. When business processes are migrated using existing capacity bandwidth may be inadequate and business disruptions can occur.

How a Cloud Managed Services Provider Can Help

• Your chosen Cloud managed service provider should assist in managing bandwidth needs to transfer workloads and applications, while maintaining routine operations, if necessary, during the migration. The right strategy to scale up and down can help in expediting the data transfer to shorten downtime. If additional bandwidth is needed for a short amount of time, the provider can assist you in procuring additional capacity in a cost effective manner.
• Most providers will have migration methods and tooling that allows most of the data to be migrated ahead of the final migration, thus making an incremental update the only necessary task during the actual final migration activities.

3) Data format & file compatibility issues

Formatting the data as required for the target location is an important prerequisite in the migration process. For example, the protocols for a database hosted on premises match the required database protocols for the new online environment? If not, API connectors must be available to make data migration from one location to another successful. Data formatting and file compatibility add complexity to the migration process.

How a Cloud Managed Services Provider Can Help

• The right cloud managed service provider should have proven knowledge and expertise for industry-leading tools that can automate migration processes data formatting.
• Automated tools can apply the right API to each workload or database to be migrated, ensuring that the source workload will operate properly in the new, target cloud location.
• Automating this process again reduces the chance for human error, and mitigates migration risks.

4) Security Challenges

Security is a top concern, not just for cloud hosting, but also for “data in transit.” Additionally, dropped packets during the migration can impact data integrity. Maintaining data security during and post migration is a big challenge faced by enterprises.

How a Cloud Managed Services Provider Can Help

The right cloud managed service provider places a high priority on the security of your data and usually, they have multiple safeguards in place, even before you become their client. Cloud managed service providers offer you the same infrastructure that they use for their own internal workloads—and security of data should be their top priority. Look for providers that offer the following:

• Proactive vulnerability assessments and management
• Network intrusion protection
• Firewall protection and DMZ options
• Industry compliance and external auditing
• Anti-virus and malware protection
• Internet security
• Data encryption capabilities
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities
• Automated security patching, to ensure that all services are as up-to-date as possible and are updated on a regular basis
• Proactive environment monitoring and alerts
• Incident response, including mitigation and remediation, as well as forensic analysis and recommendations for future prevention
• Disaster recovery

To conclude, migrating business critical applications and data to the cloud may be fraught with technical challenges – but if you choose to partner with the right Cloud Managed Services provider, all challenges may be overcome. It is imperative for your Cloud Managed Services provider to have an in-depth understanding of your business processes, data security systems and network capacity before planning and execution of cloud migration is begun.

Aarav Solutions is a global product engineering and IT consulting services provider. As a managed cloud services provider we have spent the last decade assisting enterprise businesses from across the globe in their cloud migration projects. Our clientele comes from a broad array of industries – Telecommunications, Banking & Finance, Government, Power and Utilities among various other B2B segments. Our goal is to empower businesses in their quest for digital transformation with our experience, innovation and next generation technology.