3 Biggest Misconceptions of Migrating to the Cloud

This podcast series is hosted by two AI Agents who provide a summary of my latest posts from the Digital Value Creation publication.

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3 Biggest Misconceptions of Migrating to the Cloud

Show Notes

The 3 biggest misconceptions of migrating to the cloud

1. Cloud = SaaS

   1. SaaS is a business model, not how software is delivered

   2. You don’t need cloud to support SaaS

   3. The cloud has many benefits that come at a cost

   4. It’s a business decision to move to the cloud, not a technology decision

   5. Litmus test for cloud migration

      1. Are you willing to invest in modernizing the technology stack for your products

      2. Does your growth rate for each product require scalability with short lead times?

      3. Do your products require high resiliency, at 99.99% uptime?

      4. Does usage for your products constantly spike beyond its normal operating thresholds?

2. The Cloud will be cheaper than my Data Center

   1. Organizations overspend on cloud services up to 70% due to poor management

   2. While cloud offers flexibility and scalability, they do come at a premium

   3. Pre-Migration

      1. Replicating data center in the cloud which leads to inefficient use of resources

   4. Post-Migration

      1. Lack of governance for managing cloud resources

      2. Immature cloud practices

   5. Promise of Increased Productivity

      1. Instead of shifting the team to higher value work, they get shifted to different work, going from supporting data center operations to cloud operations

      2. Savings don’t appear on the P&L statement to highlight capture of productivity

   6. Strategies to manage cloud costs

      1. Upskill and train your staff

      2. Establish FinOPS practice

      3. Planning your modernization journey

         1. IaaS → PaaS → FaaS

      4. Ability to quantify benefits through a data driven approach using metrics

3. Operational Resiliency included in the box

   1. Explicit planning and designing for operational resiliency

   2. High availability

   3. Fault Tolerance

   4. Impact of uptime to your customers

   5. Understanding your SLAs

   6. Analyze consumption patterns

Perform migrations in the right way that minimizes risk and delivers the most value while achieving your business goals.

Find the right partners to guide you through the migration process:

• Find partners for your cloud environment, specializing in your workload types

Build a TCO and ROI model, ensuring your breakeven point happens well within your hold period. ROI should also capture how benefits will impact the bottom line.

Make a financial case for why the cloud is the right choice, not just because it’s the trend in IT today.

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PS: Views and opinions expressed in this newsletter are my own and do not reflect the views, opinions and practices of my current or past employers.