The cloud is easily the greatest talk of the town when it comes to new movements in the IT industry. With almost all established and new companies hailing cloud computing as the mainstream computing module of the near future, it seems as though the world is set for another great technology shift, with mass cloud migrations on the horizon.
Unfortunately, all is not as it seems, as despite the popularity of the cloud and the enthusiasm of enterprises to quickly adopt it as their primary platform, there is a distinct shortage of cloud knowledge and operation skills, which is leading to ineffective adoption, slower acclimatization and barriers in the way of seamless migration. With data growing at a stupendous rate and the general IT sphere experiencing massive technology evolution, cloud skills are more vital now, than ever.
Fortunately, all of the aforementioned negatives can be mitigated through early and effective delivery of expert cloud technology training. To that end, in this article, we will discuss the areas which are experiencing the greatest lack of cloud skills, and how cloud technology training can help alleviate the pitfalls, for easier cloud migration.
Strategic Project Management Hindrances
Cloud migration is an effort that needs a good measure of strategy behind it. This is because some applications will make the shift to the cloud very easily (due to either prior optimization or recent adjustments) and some will adhere too strongly to outdated frameworks to make migration easy. Some applications may even refuse to migrate at all (due to compliance, ROI and licensing-related issues, among others). Cloud-centric project management capabilities are a must if the infrastructure is to be migrated in time, within scope and most importantly, without going over the budget, as in standard project management.
Unfortunately, the methodology and tools associated with successful project management, which in this case, is migrating to the cloud, need training to handle efficiently.
Compliance and Security Issues
While data and enterprise security may not have been an issue for many an organization operating on legacy systems, the same cannot be said for enterprises migrating to the cloud. This is because of the radical shift in general platform, which leads to lack of attention to infrastructure security, and causes further holes in the protection framework for the future.
Additionally, compliance to the requirements of migrated and stored data is also an afterthought, due to insufficient knowledge regarding the subject, which stems from a general absence of protocol-related knowledge.
Integration, Deployment Strategy and Adoption
When migrating to the cloud, the primary challenges that any company will face are related to integration of software, business and processes with cloud systems, cloud deployment strategy and adoption via quick software launch. The lack of a deployment strategy architecture is the biggest of the three, since it leverages the new technology directly, leading to companies taking insufficient advantage of cloud tech.
Migration-related Change
The business model of a company changes to varying degrees with the introduction of the cloud. This causes many teams and even managers to suddenly become ill-equipped to tackle the challenges that come with the change. Information access, cloud IT operations, financial models, data security etc. become concerns now, since all of these operate differently in the cloud.
Technical Skills Gap
Overall, a gap in technical skills affects organizations the most, as they can only use the components of the cloud provider’s offering if there is existing knowledge of what components should be used how, to get the best results.
Additionally, virtualization during early adoption phases, in many cases, is the element that is most clearly absent during cloud migration. Adding to that the general lack of cloud workload operation knowledge, and we have the reason for why enterprises often lag behind their migration deadlines.
Delivering Cloud Knowledge and Skills through Cloud Technology Training
Regardless of how prepared the organization may be to shift to the cloud, it cannot do so seamlessly if there are weak links in the chain when it comes to tech-knowledge. The cloud brings with it a unique set of processes and systems, all of which run differently, and require dedicated training to operate.
To ensure that the migration to the cloud does not encounter any pitfalls which may slow or even halt progress, it is necessary to deliver cloud training early on and consistently.