Three steps to get your cloud migration journey off on the right foot

When moving to the cloud, many organisations concentrate their focus on the change in technology and overlook the change in culture. There is no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to change management. Every organisation will have its own unique considerations. Nevertheless, there are some core strategies to be relevant and useful across a broad range of businesses. 

1. Establish a purpose for moving to the Cloud

While some cloud use and experimentation can evolve independently and in parallel across an organisation, it’s important to make some deliberate decisions before starting a larger migration. At this stage, it is recommended to have a detailed answer to two key questions to ensure a successful cloud migration:

1. Where do you want to go or what’s your cloud vision?
2. How do you plan to get there?

Start by having a conversation with leaders and those who will be key to the journey about how far you want to push your cloud vision. This alignment ensures everyone is on the same page and will provide greater direction, allowing more deliberate action. 

2. Look for the right strategy for you 

Whether a “lift and shift” approach to the cloud is right for you or a more transformative approach with a lot of re-architecting, the most important thing is to find the flavour of change which is appropriate to your context and level of ambition. This will both shape your key migration activities but also the level of impact to be managed within your organisation.  

There are many ways to embark on a change journey for cloud migration. It is important to deeply understand the needs of your business and its people and determine what strategy makes the most sense.

3. Learn from best practices

Share the vision and measure, measure, measure. Once you’ve crystallised your cloud vision with leadership and key stakeholders, share that vision widely. Set success goals and communicate them to hold yourself accountable.  

Be clear about the capabilities you will need in the future and where you’ll get them. For example, if your vision is to become a cloud-first, data and AI-led organisation, ensuring you have the right data science skills and machine learning capabilities in your organisation to achieve that vision becomes a critical step.

Find the right balance between capabilities that should be under central control and capabilities that should be decentralised or agile. For example, should machine learning be something that sits centrally or should it be spread across your organisation? For every business, the solution will be a little different and there’s no one true answer. There’ll be lots of different opinions about this, so the sooner the conversation starts, the better.

Start thinking about the needed tech and non-tech skills now and how you’ll fill the gaps. Building the tech skills will take time and not everyone will feel comfortable with the future picture of collaboration, innovation and agility. 

At PointStar, we’ve spent years digitally transforming organisations and our Professional Services team leverages the lessons we’ve learned for the benefit of customers embarking on their own cloud journeys.