Moving to the cloud is the new prime service

13.02.2020 1,105 1

Martin Deshev

With so many cloud computing providers out there it’s almost a guarantee that eventually the vast majority of companies will start using such services. But with that comes a new challenge – cloud migration and its implementation.

It may seem obvious, but many providers seem to neglect that part. Of course, they offer tools and support to the client, but in many cases, especially for small businesses, they need help with the entire process. And even enterprises experience challenges as they have massive amounts of data and on-premise systems that need migration.

A helping hand

While migration to the cloud shouldn’t be very difficult, it boils down to skills. Many companies experience a shortage of IT skills. Moving to the cloud is one of those situations where skillful employees can really make a difference.

But when you’re a small company, you tend not to have the funds to acquire enough talent or pay for employee trainings. And even enterprises, especially not in the IT industry, can’t get enough IT specialists to cover all of the areas and this often means that work is lagging behind.

As a result, cloud migration services are becoming quite popular. So popular even the big names like Google and IBM now have such features. Google recently introduced its Transfer Service for enterprises that moves billions of files and petabytes of data. IBM has a whole platform for cloud migration. Microsoft also has one for its Azure platform.

And there are also plenty of companies that specialize in various cloud migration services. They are literally in the hundreds and all of them offer different options. Some of them specialize in services only for a specific platform, like AWS or Azure. Others tend to focus more on the types of files and goals – for example, are you moving just files to a storage or you want the deployment of apps and so on. Still others provide just technical help with the migration or full-on support with choosing the right platform, costs reductions, optimizations, etc.

Is it worth it?

If we follow the simple logic – yes. There wouldn’t be so many services out there if there wasn’t a market for them. In the age of outsourcing you can offer a service for pretty much everything and you will find customers for it.

That being said, cloud migration services can be helpful if you choose them wisely. For that, first you have to do your research. When you plan on migrating to the cloud and choosing platforms, you’re already exploring the costs and challenges that will accompany the transition to a given platform.

You can also explore cloud migration services that offer the help you would need and see if their proposal is actually better than what you could do. If you’re going to save some costs or lower the risks of potential issues that could bring indirect costs, then for sure go for that service.

However, if you have the needed skilled employees and they are confident in handling the task, then you can keep it in-house and just work with the cloud computing provider you’ve chosen. So, it’s a per-case decision, but one that should definitely be explored.