Five Independent Software Vendors Cloud Migration Obstacles and How to Avoid Them

A cloud migration sometimes seems difficult to prepare for. Even completely avoiding the process might seem easier. However, relying on outdated infrastructure or conventional servers can harm your product.

You can scale your organization, launch applications more quickly, and save money by moving to the cloud. Your planning is the key to a successful migration. You must be conscious of the difficulties independent software vendors (ISVs) encounter while transferring their programs or apps to the cloud.

We’ll go through the top advantages of cloud hosting in this article, as well as the five main independent software vendors (ISV) difficulties you might encounter and solutions to those challenges.

Benefits of Moving to the Cloud

Moving your processes from conventional on-premises servers to a cloud environment is referred to as cloud migration. You can move your data between clouds or from conventional servers to the cloud.

The following are the main advantages you get when switching from a conventional hosting configuration to a cloud environment:

Lower IT Costs

The costs related to an on-premises configuration are eliminated when you use cloud services to manage your ISV firm.

The initial fees and continuing management of their servers are affordable for large, well-established tech firms, but this overhead can easily bankrupt small to medium specialty providers.

When you go to the cloud, all server maintenance is handled by your Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) hosting company, and you only have to pay for server usage.

More Rapid Deployment

By switching to the cloud, you may deploy more quickly—in hours as opposed to weeks or months. You can increase operational effectiveness and hasten your go-to-market plan if you have access to more cutting-edge cloud infrastructure.

Additionally, you may fix bugs and handle problems immediately to enhance the user experience. Alternatively, you can get patching support as part of your customer service from a managed provider.

Increase Your Revenue via SaaS

The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) market is estimated to be valued at $172 billion by Gartner. SaaS solutions are becoming more and more common among companies of all sizes since they have reduced initial user expenses.

Offering SaaS solutions over the cloud is a great approach for businesses to generate new leads and recurring income.

Additional Flexibility and Scalability

Utilizing a cloud host also expands your access to network configurations and allows you to quickly scale your infrastructure. You don’t need to completely reinvent your IT infrastructure to adapt your environment to new business demands.

In order to accommodate an agile marketing and business approach, cloud hosting was designed. Only when you actually need particular services do you pay for them. So you won’t have to worry about what to do with your current configuration if you need to execute a strategic pivot.

Extra Backups

Cloud hosting companies offer a variety of data backup options, from catastrophe recovery to on-server backups. This lessens the impact of a system compromise by hackers.

Having backups allows you to quickly deploy a replica of your server and prevent extended downtimes that could damage your visitors.

Cloud Migration Challenges

Although cloud hosting has many advantages for businesses, moving off-premises always seems to be the most difficult. And if you don’t have a plan for getting there, switching to a cloud infrastructure can in fact take a lot of time and be difficult.

The top five difficulties you should be aware of while migrating your ISV to the cloud are listed below.

Time-consuming Migration

If you don’t take the effort to understand the initial scope of your migration, you can find yourself dealing with problems that make your transfer take months to complete. It will become evident whether a typical data migration or lift and shift migration are appropriate for your ISV firm based on your existing infrastructure.

Then you can draft a migration plan outlining everything you now own, what you’re taking and where you’re taking it, and what you’ll do with the unnecessary assets. You may make a more accurate time estimate for your move by using a roadmap.

Downtime

Network disruptions are more likely to occur when you move a lot of data. Your business suffers if your network is offline. An outage will, at least, disrupt the client experience, and in serious situations, it might result in the loss of confidential information.

By setting up a temporary environment that you can use to run during the migration to prevent service interruptions, you may reduce your risk of downtime. There is no way to completely eliminate risk, therefore let your stakeholders know if there might be usage restrictions or downtime.

By transferring data when fewer people are accessing the servers—during off-peak hours—you may also lessen the effect on your team and client base.

Interoperability Issues

When moving to the cloud, one problem you can encounter is a lack of compatibility between your current software and the new cloud environment.

The capacity of various systems to share information is referred to as interoperability. It can be defined as the degree of compatibility between various apps and programs.

Before choosing your hosting company, you should audit the platforms you intend to move to in order to prevent compatibility problems. Make sure your new hosting provider provides all the infrastructure components you require to sustain your apps’ operation.

Weaknesses in Security

In order to strengthen your data integrity, cloud providers offer a number of security benefits like out-of-the-box encryption and partitioned workstations. However, it doesn’t follow that you aren’t exposed to security dangers.

Simply because you don’t know as much about the hazards related to the cloud, you can be more vulnerable to security breaches when you switch to a new ecosystem.

The most significant security risks to your cloud infrastructure are improper environment settings, unauthorized access, and unsecured APIs. Pay attention to your access management guidelines and offer security awareness training to reduce your exposure.

Because only your business has access to the infrastructure, picking a private cloud server over a public cloud system can further reduce your risk of attack. You have more power over compliance and security when you’re isolated.

Transforming Your Internal Team

Moving to the cloud involves more than simply IT changes. Your entire business may be impacted. In other words, the methods that were successful for on-premises hosting may not always be the most effective ones for cloud environments.

Do my development team’s abilities and resources allow them to operate efficiently in a cloud environment before my migration?

If not, you might need to offer more training or think about providing more funding for staffing. Look for a provider that provides a thorough knowledge base and other educational resources your team can use to assist in adapting your team.