Cloud journey still causing problems for many users

There is plenty of talk about digital transformation and the old well worn phrases about 'the journey to the cloud' seem to have been largely retired with the presumption that the destination has been reached.

However there continue to be plenty of customers that are yet to get deeply into the cloud citing all sorts of problems, including costs and complexity.

Research from Rackspace indicated that 71% of businesses said that they were about two years into their public cloud journey and putting more workloads into a hosted environment was seen by many as a high priority.

There might be willingness there from users but where the channel can help is with helping them scope out the costs properly and provide help with migration.

The report Maintaining Momentum: Cloud Migration Learnings, commissioned by Rackspace and conducted by Forrester Consulting, surveyed the landscape across the UK, Germany, France and the US had some words of warning for those firms looking to try and do it all on their own.

The research found that 78% of users did recognise the role of a service partner and many said they were looking for experienced cloud providers that could help with migration issues.

“Cloud is the engine of digital transformation and a critical enablement factor for innovation, cost reduction and CX initiatives. But while most organisations we meet have started on their cloud journey, I would say the majority did not expect the scale of the ongoing challenge," said Adam Evans, director of Professional Services at Rackspace.

“As a business generation, we are getting faster at new technology adoption, but we still seem to stumble when it comes to understanding the requirements (and limitations) of the business consuming it. Introducing new cloud-based operating practices across an entire organisation is rarely straightforward, as with anything involving people, processes and their relationship with technology," he added.

His advice was to start the process with an "accurate perspective on their maturity, capability and mindset" and then build from there.