WHY DO CLOUD PROJECTS FAIL ?

This quarter I have seen an excellent growth numbers by all top three cloud providers, AWS, MS-Azure, Google cloud. That is the clear indication of accelerated growth of cloud adoption across the spectrum of industries.

While is good thing to know that its growing, its important to know how is cloud been adopted. Are companies adopting cloud solutions in hurry because of the circumstantial compulsions? If companies are not following best practices, the projects are set to fail. Especially first timers. Various studies suggest that failure rate is very high ( nearly one third ) and many organizations have moved their apps back to on-premise. So, how one could avoid these failures?

FACTORS TO CONSIDER TO AVOID FAILURE

• Decision to migrate to cloud is not just technical, It should be treated as a strategic business decision. It requires buying in from top executives about its value, benefits and implications. A business case needs to be prepared after thorough cost benefit analysis
• Failing to define goals and objectives. There is nothing called “One size fits all “Needs and challenges of every organization are different and a lot of deliberation is needed if cloud is the way forward? Decisions influenced by popular trends need to be avoided
• Inadequate preparedness of the team. Cloud migration requires specific skills. If the team is not well equipped, it will impact the entire process right from planning till execution and ongoing support.
• Though cost savings could be one of the key decision factor, poor assessment of initial cost and recurring cost, wrong estimation of timelines, mistakes made during adoption phase, may cause significant delay and failure to realize ROI
• The other factors which impact overall success are migration approach, architecture, not testing enough, vendor selection, integration with legacy systems, latency issues, governance framework, not planning for scale, security, regulations, compliances etc.