Cloud computing seems to have developed a money saving reputation, but actually this isn’t always the situation. Of course, pay-as-you-go models often provide instant savings to the IT budget, but this has now become an expectation. According to the Manchester Business School, 88% of 1,300 organisations have reported direct savings by switching to cloud services.
The problem is, these savings aren’t always immediate and by no stretch of the imagination are they guaranteed. During the migration period particularly you can fail to see any savings whatsoever. However, it’s not instant savings the cloud service prides itself on. In fact, it’s primary benefit is helping to grow your business.
Don’t rush the migration
It’s important not to rush through your migration process and instead take time to plan and understand the system. This doesn’t have to be a lengthy procedure – but it’s advised to start with a collection of non-essential data you can move across straight away. This will help you establish a method and ensure the rest of the migration is both risk and hassle free. Rushing your migration is one of the biggest causes of undue cost.
Don’t spend too much time
At the other end of the scale to what has been mentioned above, are businesses taking too long to migrate over to Cloud. Large organisations seem to get stuck in the migration process, with lots of data and complexity surrounding the move. These migrations can become abandoned or rushed through, with many mistakes made along the way.
Don’t forget to set clear business goals
Before migration it’s important to set clear goals for your business, laying out what you expect from the service. Without clearly defining this beforehand, business value and improvement will largely go unnoticed. These shouldn’t be vague. “We want to increase the value of IT performance” can’t really be measured. Instead, focus on easily measured goals such as uptime, maintenance costs and hardware spend.
Don’t focus on saving money
If you want to see immediate savings from your Cloud service, the points listed above should provide a good starting place. The problem is, long-term savings and improvement is often the best measurement for Cloud service success. In fact, many experts believe cost savings is the wrong metric in which to measure success rates. After the migration process, companies don’t tend to reduce their IT usage because of growth and efficient utilisation rates. The ability to grow your business should be the defining factor when it comes to measurability.
Qlic have helped hundreds of organisations integrate the cloud into their IT infrastructure. Our experience helps us recommend the best cloud solutions for your business, allowing you to focus on using IT as a tool, while we handle the monitoring and maintenance. All our cloud services are based in the UK and we are a Microsoft Silver Cloud Services Partner, so you can rest assured that our solutions meet the highest security and compliance requirements for your business.
If you would like more information about how the cloud can help your business get in touch with us today on 020 8269 6878 or visit www.qlicit.com/cloud-solutions/.
