“Don’t treat your cloud infrastructure as a new data center”

JAXenter: Why are enterprises migrating legacy systems to cloud infrastructure?

Vince Lubsey: Legacy-to-cloud migrations are happening for a variety of reasons. According to our research, a combined 77% of IT leaders said their primary motivation for migrating legacy systems to cloud infrastructure was either a desire to secure data, maintain data access or save money. Optimizing storage resources and accelerating digital transformation were other top reasons.

Meanwhile, 78% of respondents said that IT management systems were the most likely legacy applications to move to the cloud, while 46% said security and 39% said ecommerce. Most migrations are driven by a specific event, which could be anything from a data center constraint to a hardware refresh or some infrastructure driver.

For example, due to the pandemic, many enterprises are realizing the limitations of their on-premise IT infrastructure, like its inability to support a workforce that is 100% remote.

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JAXenter: What are the biggest challenges companies face when making this move?

Vince Lubsey: We know that some companies struggle with having limited IT resources and knowledge. Per our study, 34% said the top challenge to running legacy systems in the cloud was a lack of in-house skills, and 71% said it was hard or somewhat hard to find these people.

No matter how smart your people are, there’s always going to be some kind of training involved, which is another challenge. 42% of people responding to our survey said that difficulty training end users was the top challenge to using legacy systems now running on cloud infrastructure.

The good news is, companies seem to be getting stronger in these areas, as the community of cloud-trained consultants and engineers grows in size and geography.

JAXenter: What are three tips you have to help enterprises make the transition more smoothly?

Vince Lubsey: First of all, don’t treat your cloud infrastructure as a new data center. Having infrastructure capabilities enabled via API brings a different kind of flexibility.

Also, focus on security – early and often. If you don’t have a partner with these skills, find one, and don’t forget to ask for their credentials.

Finally, leverage the capabilities of the cloud provider to be more innovative and agile. As noted in a report from ResearchAndMarkets.com, companies have a need for “a robust and agile environment to increase scalability and efficiency in the existing business landscape.”

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