In April 2018, Gartner Inc., the world’s leading research and advisory company, released a statement that the public cloud services market is projected to grow 21.4 percent worldwide in 2018 to total $186.4 billion, up from $153.5 billion in 2017. Yet there are still some common lingering myths about moving to the cloud. This is perhaps due in part to inconsistencies in research, which makes it trickier to navigate separating fact from fiction. Here we take a look at five persistent myths about moving to the cloud.
Myth 1: If our data moves to the cloud, our organisation will no longer have control over our technology.
Fact: You still have total control over technology, but your IT team won’t have to worry about constant updates.
When you move to the cloud, time spent maintaining hardware and upgrading software is greatly reduced, eliminating the associated headaches with it. Instead your team can focus on advancing your organisation’s technology and dedicate more time to on improving operations and launching initiatives. Without the need to allocate portions of your budget on servers for storage and workloads, you can invest in supporting organisational managers in a more agile fashion, quickly responding to their needs.
Myth 2: I have to move everything to the cloud. It is an all-or-nothing scenario.
Fact: You can move to the cloud at your own pace, or use a hybrid approach.
While some cloud supporters may advocate for moving your entire organisation to the cloud all at once, this is not a process that needs to happen overnight. It is recommended to migrate to the cloud over time with a hybrid approach; the combination of an on-premises, private cloud and third-party, public cloud services.
The hybrid cloud creates a consistent platform that spans data centres and the cloud, simplifying IT and delivering apps and data to users on virtually any device, anywhere. It gives you control to deliver the computing power and capabilities that your organisation demands and to scale up or down as needed without wasting your onsite technology investments.
As many organisations move their productivity workloads to the cloud, the path for each workload is different, and the time it takes for those migrations varies. We can help you move workloads, and then help you figure out the right long-term plan for more difficult or larger projects.
Myth 3: Cloud migration is too much for my organisation to handle.
Fact: We’re here to help every step of the way.
When you start considering how to move petabytes of data to the cloud, it is easy to see why some people think “going cloud” is too big a challenge for IT departments and staff, alike. We are not going to tell you it is simple, but you really can get cloud implementations up and running quickly.
We will help you every step of the way, with information and tips, advice on migration possibilities, and a phased approach for hybrid setups. There are several paths you can follow, and in most cases, you can use your existing tools and processes throughout the migration, so day to day work is not disrupted.
Myth 4: Corporate spies, cyber thieves, and governments will have access to my data if it is in the cloud.
Fact: It’s your data, not anyone else’s.
This is a top concern about the cloud among many organisations, but it is unfounded. Your IT team manages access, sets up rights and restrictions, and provides access and options. Further, your organisation remains the sole owner. You retain the rights, title, and interest in the data stored in the Azure cloud.
When safeguarding your data, Microsoft operates under several key principles:
• Your data is not mined for advertising or for any purpose other than providing you with services that you have paid for.
• If you ever choose to leave the service, you take your data with you.
• Privacy controls allow you to configure who in your organisation has access and what they can access.
• Extensive auditing and supervision prevent admins from unauthorised access to your data.
Strict controls and design elements prevent your data from mingling with that of other organisations, and Microsoft data center staff never have unprivileged access to your data.
Microsoft was the first major cloud provider to adopt the world’s first international standard for cloud privacy. The standard establishes a uniform, international approach to protecting privacy for personal data stored in the cloud. It reinforces that:
• You are in control of your data.
• You know what’s happening with your data.
• Microsoft provides strong security protection for your data.
• Your data won’t be used for advertising.
• Microsoft encourages government inquiries to be made directly to you unless legally prohibited and will challenge attempts to prohibit disclosure in court.
Myth 5: We have to retrain employees to learn the new tools.
Fact: Moving to a cloud-based solution doesn’t have to mean retraining employees.
Many cloud solutions allow you to use the same applications your employees are used to, with access to files anywhere online.
For example, all of your hard work learning how to manage SharePoint is not lost! SharePoint Online shares the same familiar administration and management tools, whether your deployment is in the cloud, on location, or in a hybrid of the two.
When moving to SharePoint Online, you no longer need to concern yourself with controlling the workload implementation — instead, your IT team can focus on controlling its configuration. With the convenient, one-time, expert-led implementation that SharePoint Online handles, your IT team can reallocate time they used to spend on implementation and concentrate on building strong, strategic tools for the organisation. SharePoint Online simply abstracts the infrastructure, enabling you to focus on the solution.
In Closing
Cloud-based applications are here to stay. Most organisations that have moved to cloud have chosen to do so because they recognised the need for business agility and cost savings that come with it. At Ballard Chalmers we have been pioneering in the Cloud since the very beginnings – our Azure experts will be happy to help you. Contact us.
Content source: Microsoft
