MCPc Blog

Overcoming Challenges along the Path to the Cloud

 Email Article  

Tweet  

  

After many collaborative hours planning, organization and executing over the last several months, the first of MCPc’s Modern Technology Lessons roundtable series came to fruition. Here, Cleveland business leaders came together to talk candidly about challenges and realities along the path to the cloud.  

Moderated by Jack Wilson, a national virtualization speaker, and Andy Jones, cloud technology expert and Group President of MCPc’s Advanced Technology Group, the business leaders shared experiences about virtualizing IT, technologies used by their organizations, and benefits and risks of the cloud.

Jack and Andy also shared their own experiences with the group. For example, a year ago Jack was in the shoes of attendees as a CTO trying to figure out the cloud. Andy shared insights from MCPc’s move to a new office, and what that meant for the company’s cloud considerations.

The process of moving to a hosted infrastructure and IT ecosystem is complex. The decision to transition to the cloud affects the entire business and its culture, not just IT. This post discusses our audiences’ two common challenges along the path to the cloud — internal buy-in and security.

Gaining Cloud Buy-In

Adopting cloud technologies in your organization requires a long-term, strategic approach, and has many barriers along the way. The first step in cloud adoption: begin with an assessment of your current state and goals for the cloud.

• How virtualized is your organization?

• What technologies do you have in place, where is your data, and who has access to both?

• What are your organization’s goals for moving to a hosted environment? Hint:  Consider both IT’s goals and the company’s business objectives.

• How will a move to the cloud impact the entire organization, and is it ready?

These are some of the questions to start asking while you’re assessing the current IT ecosystem and business environment. Then, it’s time to conquer roadblocks that may pop up along the way to adoption. As our group discussed, many of these barriers have little to do with technology, including:

• Business culture and politics. Who holds the purse, and are they onboard for cloud adoption?

• Cost. What’s the ROI of adoption compared to TCO? How you present this analysis to the C-Suite can be critical in a company’s willingness to adopt. Remember that a hosted infrastructure has long-term benefits, while it also improves the quality of business life, making data more controlled and accessible for your team.

• Resistance to change. Some people just don’t like the idea of doing things differently, and they’ll look to IT for guidance in that transition.

Cloud Computing Security

Finally, one of the most-talked-about concerns when adopting a cloud solution for businesses is security. What’s happening to my company’s data as it’s hosted in the cloud?

The “Mythbusters” section of the roundtable event had a true or false statement for the group to debate: The cloud is NOT secure.

With a split audience, business leaders discussed how secure their own environments are or should be; how secure the cloud can be; and threats of hackers, data breaches or open loops in the system. Andy’s practical take on cloud security opened the discussion:

“Sure, the cloud is secure. It can be about as secure as any other technology you use, or as secure as walking down the street with a briefcase full of confidential documents.”

The point of the statement was that like other technologies we use every day — including virtual banking, email, file sharing, server or network access, BYOD, and more — cloud technology is as safe as we design it to be.

To ensure a secure cloud computing environment, work with your provider to make sure that their physical data center and hosted security practices are up to your standards. Encrypt data before it leaves your facility, manage access to critical data and processes, and continually monitor the state of your hosted environment.

Personally, it was very rewarding to see our customers interact with not only our speakers but also with each other to gain new insights, discuss issues and identify new ways of approaching these modern technology advances. Now, the MCPc Cleveland Team is off and running, organizing our second event in the series to be held August 10^th on Mobile Device Management. Hope to see you there.

What Do You Think?

What roadblocks have you found most challenging along your organization’s path to cloud computing?

Jason Taylor is Senior Vice President of Sales Operations and in the past has served as an IT consultant for several major enterprise-level organizations throughout Northeast Ohio. Connect with Jason on LinkedIn.

Stay Connected with MCPc: Subscribe to the blog; follow us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.