Partnerships are crucial for successful cloud migration

Migrat­ing to the cloud is a pow­er­ful solu­tion with many recog­nised rewards, but there is still a great deal of iner­tia because it can be a mete­oric change for many busi­ness­es. Shift­ing pre­cious intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, cus­tomer data­bas­es and oper­at­ing sys­tems to a com­put­ing infra­struc­ture that a cor­po­ra­tion doesn’t own and is off its premis­es can be a chal­lenge.

The cloud also alters the way IT teams have func­tioned for over a decade. It is that pro­found. Yet shift­ing to the cloud is no longer a ques­tion of ‘if’, it’s ‘when,’ and ‘how much of your busi­ness.’ A vast num­ber of organ­i­sa­tions have embraced the cloud and are quick­ly reap­ing its ben­e­fits, whether that is agili­ty in deploy­ing new appli­ca­tions, sup­ply chain vis­i­bil­i­ty or bet­ter cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment.

“Mov­ing to the cloud is a big deci­sion. Busi­ness lead­ers need to show that they under­stand the mag­ni­tude of the change and the impact it will have, not just on their IT depart­ment, but all employ­ees,” says Steve Mur­phy, CEO of Epi­cor, a glob­al provider of indus­try-spe­cif­ic enter­prise soft­ware, which has over 120,000 cloud users and 27,000 cus­tomers in 150 coun­tries.

“The cloud is now table stakes. The val­ue is in find­ing growth oppor­tu­ni­ties tied to cloud effi­cien­cies. Switch­ing to cloud offers organ­i­sa­tions flex­i­bil­i­ty and resilience that keeps them ahead of the com­pe­ti­tion. It also clears the way for future growth because busi­ness­es can access the lat­est inno­va­tions at speed, as well as scale oper­a­tions,” Mur­phy adds.

Yet there are still many per­ceived obsta­cles to cloud adop­tion. In a recent sur­vey, secu­ri­ty and risk were cit­ed as the biggest con­cern by 33% of busi­ness­es, total cost of own­er­ship was a wor­ry for 27%, and the time to imple­ment and the abil­i­ty to cus­tomise to spe­cif­ic busi­ness needs was cit­ed by 26%.

“The con­cern that cloud is a big­ger secu­ri­ty risk than on-premise solu­tions are is still out there in some cir­cles. That’s why it’s impor­tant for folks to know that, due to its scale, cloud tech­nol­o­gy lever­ages far greater finan­cial and expert resources than a sin­gle organ­i­sa­tion could fea­si­bly pro­vide alone. Take Microsoft Azure – more than $1bn is spent on cyber­se­cu­ri­ty annu­al­ly, and its data cen­tre secu­ri­ty is so strict that it would be cost pro­hib­i­tive for a sin­gle busi­ness to try to repli­cate this on their own premis­es,” says Rich Murr, CIO of Epi­cor.

He adds, “Weigh­ing up the busi­ness val­ue of a cloud invest­ment is also of con­cern. While there is an upfront cost with any new sys­tem, cloud can help save busi­ness­es mon­ey in the long run. The bur­den of deploy­ing, run­ning, and upgrad­ing IT sys­tems shifts to the cloud ven­dor. This allows IT per­son­nel to become strate­gic share­hold­ers. They can then focus on dri­ving inno­va­tion.”

For cloud migra­tion to be suc­cess­ful, part­ner­ships are cru­cial. One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to adop­tion. It is not all or noth­ing, where every­thing is migrat­ed off the premis­es in one go. For exam­ple, an application’s back-end data­base can con­tin­ue to run on the premis­es, while its front-end web servers run in the cloud.

“Suc­cess­ful migra­tion requires ded­i­cat­ed sup­port to nego­ti­ate myr­i­ad options. That’s why organ­i­sa­tions need a part­ner with deep indus­try expe­ri­ence who under­stands their busi­ness needs, offers cus­tomer-dri­ven prod­ucts and inno­va­tion, and can curate the right solu­tion. Each busi­ness has nuance and spe­cial­ties, and so should their tech­nol­o­gy,” says Mur­phy.

Many indus­tries have spe­cif­ic chal­lenges asso­ci­at­ed with their par­tic­u­lar sec­tor. Each indus­try uses the cloud to max­imise its poten­tial. At the same time, there can be choice paral­y­sis. There are too many options when it comes to con­fig­ur­ing busi­ness oper­a­tions in the cloud, what to migrate and when. A lot of deci­sions are tied up in the strate­gic direc­tion of the com­pa­ny and where it wants to be in the future.

Under­stand­ing a busi­ness is vital when it comes to cloud migra­tion. That’s why Epi­cor teams tour facil­i­ties, vis­it clients’ retail loca­tions, ware­hous­es and offices. By engag­ing and col­lab­o­rat­ing with cus­tomers, Epi­cor is able to help them evolve and grow their busi­ness­es.

“At Epi­cor, we take our part­ner­ships with cus­tomers seri­ous­ly well beyond their pur­chase of a solu­tion,” Mur­phy says. “We stand side-by-side with our cus­tomers on the shop floor where many of us, includ­ing myself, have also spent time work­ing. We engage, chal­lenge, and col­lab­o­rate with cus­tomers at a deep lev­el to help them reimag­ine their busi­ness and reach their goals.”

For more about your cloud migra­tion, vis­it Epicor.com

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