Abdul Salam| Cloudtweaks
Planning to move systems and resources to the cloud is one of the most common business moves in today’s IT industry, and all the players are facing the same problems but with different elements. And that is why there can be no one definitive way for everyone to use in order to complete a move to the cloud. Each problem is fundamentally the same as everybody else’s, but it varies wildly in the details.
But first thing’s first you should know what to expect during this transition. First is that this transition is an emotional experience, people react to change mostly on the negative. They abhor change especially in terms of work where they have already gotten so used at doing something that it becomes easy and second nature. Give them something new and they will fumble and make mistakes. That is why training and conditioning are extremely essential during transition. Users should be actively getting used with the new methods while still actively using the old one. When the time comes to finally transition, it will come smoothly.
With that, here are some steps to take in order to facilitate the move. These are generalizations of the various phases involved which will vary depending on the type of systems and business needs of the organization.
1. Analyze your current system – check all your security settings and permissions and find out which ones work and which does not by interviewing people and asking for their opinions. Also ask them what process could help them be more efficient.
2. Migrate in phases – it should already be common sense to take things in strides. Doing everything at once will only lead to confusion and a bunch of unforeseen problems, not to mention long down times.
3. Create a trial team – select the best candidates to act as your beta testers of the system. The best candidates are those who already collaborate a lot with others even outside of the company, those who are knowledgeable with technical parts of cloud systems. These people would be the best one to notice real problems because they would be the ones who have actually used systems like these.
4. Communicate – this is particularly crucial. People hate surprises especially if it greatly involves changing their daily routine. Rally your people, tell them exactly what you want to do and how each of them can help or how they can be trained for the transition so that when the time comes everyone will be ready. You may even ask your cloud provider to provide the training themselves.
5. Have a move plan – since you will be transitioning in phases, it will be very important to let everyone know when exactly it is their turn to be unplugged and moved to the cloud. In this way, people can have time to adapt and change their routine and even finally start practicing whatever training they got.
