Why Cloud Migration is Still a Pain in 2024? Let’s Discuss It in Detail

Cloud migration is still a pain for many IT admins. The inherent risks involved in cloud migration are primarily due to a flawed strategy adopted during the shift. In a rush to move the entire infrastructure as early as possible, Admins end up making lots of wrong decisions and skipping over the best practices. This leads to a situation where they have to face several cloud migration challenges, and which make them ask – “why is cloud migration difficult?”. However, not everything is so problematic in this journey towards the cloud. As we explain further in this article, so let’s get started. 

Reasons to Believe that Cloud Migration is Still a Pain

Being on the cloud sounds amazing, and seeing your competitors move might induce FOMO. However, getting there is a problem on its own, especially if organizations commit to a transfer without a plan.

Another major reason is only going through the testimonies of organizations that had an unpleasant transition. This one-sided information collection leads to the birth of skepticism toward cloud migration in the minds of IT administrators. 

Organizations that decide to leave their on-premise setup for something better often ask why is cloud migration difficult. And this is not surprising, as for many of them, this is their first time dealing with such a problem. In the hopes of improving productivity, they end up biting more than they can chew. Thus, suffer the consequences

However, no one who shifted to the cloud, whether manually or with a tool, can claim a zero return on investment. The time after which these returns were realized became the real issue. This long delay in breaking even made many companies second-guess their decisions, and some even regretted it.

It is not incorrect to think that on-premise systems have a high degree of independence.  Even audits from third parties are rare. Which results in some organizations adopting a casual approach to maintaining the infrastructure. When the same organizations are asked if they would undergo a cloud migration again, they reply with a negative.

What They Don’t Tell You About Migrating to the Cloud?

Migration is not copy-pasting your existing infrastructure onto another server. It is more complicated. People who are new in this field may underestimate this complexity and only realize it later. However, the problem is that they are midway through an operation. With no rollback features. So they have to end the existing migration and redo it again.

Free migration services are not free at all. It takes up money in another form which is longer business downtime and greater troubleshooting requirements. Moreover, people who have the technicality and field knowledge required to use them are rare even inside big MNCs. So companies have to hire external help. Which ends up costing more than if they had directly gone with professionals in the first place. 

If the information that an organization is about to migrate leaks out there could be a significant security breach. During migration, many of the security systems that are usually enabled like firewalls, antivirus, etc are turned off voluntarily.  It is part of a migration that cannot be avoided. As a result, it gives nefarious entities an easy time to get in and damage the systems.  

The most common complaint is that cloud migrations often breach the budget allocated during the planning phase. A cost increase is due to inaccurate data inventory. Data inventory not only means accounting for all the data but also involves the cleanup process as well. Many miss out on the latter part and end up migrating even if that was not required. Forgetting to remove redundant data means admins have to spend more resources on rectifying the errors than the migration itself.

Migrating Due to Pressure and Not Necessity

Now that many providers are adding AI gimmicks to their cloud platforms, the urge to move into the cloud is stronger than ever. Admins might be under pressure to speed up migration. Leading them to cut corners even where they should not. 

Moreover, the rush to finish migration early may have the opposite effect. That means delays and longer downtime. The core reason is that an organization is not sure but rather just follows the latest fad. So before considering the migration, administrators should carefully understand the organizational demands, define a timeline, and not overpromise.

Inhouse Resistance to Change

Employee nostalgia towards their workstations is a hidden factor that many companies may fail to recognize. In extreme cases, the love for the old system can lead employees to actively sabotage the migration process. 

To avoid it, organizations should not force the change; instead, they should make them understand why it is being done. Any such major decision should have equal participation from users, as they are the ones who face the brunt of the change. Moreover, training sessions should begin alongside the migration to make users ready for the new setup. 

Trying to Migrate Anything and Everything

Admins have to swallow the bitter pill that only some of their workloads are going to be shifted to the cloud. When we think logically, if the same setup is to be replicated on the cloud, then why even migrate in the first place?

Additionally, many of the legacy systems don’t even have a direct counterpart in the cloud for migrating data. In such a scenario, administrators can either decommission the old system altogether or create a hybrid scenario. Both have their pros and cons that can be best evaluated by the company admin.  

The Pain of Cloud Migration After the Transition

The biggest source of concern for admins after the job is problems with the data itself.

Issues may include:

• Missing Data – The data that was selected for migration at the source failed to arrive at the destination. 
• Lost data – This is when the migration team falsely believes that data is shifted and deletes it from the source. Only to realize their mistake later. 
• Mismatching Data – Data gets migrated but becomes attached to a different user than for whom it was intended. Everything, from systems not working to users facing login issues, is a result of faulty data being brought into the cloud. 

Problems Faulty Physical Infrastructure Brings in Cloud Migration

When administrators move their data and systems to the cloud, their infrastructure, like the network, plays a key role in how successful this is going to be. Moreover, having proper bandwidth can drastically increase the number of items that can be shifted at a time. It also has a minimum impact on other non-migrated items. So don’t migrate unless your infrastructure is capable enough to support it.

The time when you migrate determines the time it will take to migrate. Smart admins schedule the migration when the demand on the network from secondary sources is low.

We would like to underline one thing before we conclude. Organizations can mitigate the risks of migrating to the cloud by letting experts assist them with the change. And speaking of experts, no one has a longer line of satisfied customers than SysTools Cloud Migration Services.

Conclusion

This blog contains the answer to why cloud migration is difficult even in 2024. Here we explained how getting blinded by potential future-proofing administrators ruins their fully functioning systems. The cloud offers many advantages, but thinking of it as the holy grail is also not practical. Moreover, despite so many organizations adopting the cloud, a large chunk display uneasiness when asked about the process of getting there. We explained why this is the case and also suggested ways of minimizing the errors.