After all, trading our Fiat 500 for a Ferrari won’t automatically make us race car drivers. There’s a whole process involved.

Cloud migration is the same. We can’t simply move our local servers to the cloud and expect to be dazzled. It’s only one step of many, and we need to finish the entire cloud-native transformation process before we get those umbrellas out. But once it’s done, it will rain. To give you an idea of the potential precipitation, Gartner claims that enterprises saved an average of 15% on their IT costs by migrating services to the cloud. That alone makes the migration worthwhile. However, cost savings are far from the only (or even the primary) reason to go cloud native.

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s take a closer look at the steps needed to complete a cloud-native transformation.

1. Set the goals: start by figuring out what the goals are. Where do you – the entire organization – want to be tomorrow or a year from now? What about five years from now? Make sure these goals align with the company’s business needs and objectives before you begin.
2. Set a strategy and timeline: Set a strategy that aims at achieving the goals you’ve just established in a realistic timeframe. Also, don’t forget that the strategy must align with your business’s overall purpose and, most importantly, include a customer success period for your people.
3. Research the technology: You know your goals and strategies, which means it’s time to choose the tech. Be diligent and do the research, but ultimately your shiny new goals and strategies should determine which tech, platform and provider to go for. Also, remember that this is a long-term change, so keep an eye out for solutions that offer agility, scalability and value over time.
4. Pick the right people: It’s time to delegate. You have a brilliant project with clear goals, an excellent strategy and the right tool already added to cart. It’s time to choose your champions. Ideally, they’ll all be super-popular geniuses who love cloud solutions, but failing that, a mix of qualified and eager colleagues will usually do (the former can be motivated and the latter can learn). If speed is high on your list of priorities, cloud experts or managed cloud providers will turbocharge your transformation journey.
5. Optimize processes: The team’s first order of business should be to decide which processes and applications to optimize and automate in the cloud for maximum ROI. Why not migrate all of them, you ask? Unfortunately, not every single process and application will be more efficient in the cloud. If you’re unsure which ones are and aren’t, reach out to and work with experts on cloud optimization. They know their stuff.
6. Time to migrate: Goals set, strategy ready, tech chosen, A-team assembled, processes and applications identified for migration; you’re ready. All that time you spent on steps 1-5 pays dividends in the form of a rapid and smooth transition, especially if you decided to include experts in the process.
7. Manage: Don’t forget this step! The world of technology evolves at a blistering pace, and you need to keep testing, experimenting, and optimizing your stack to ensure you meet your objectives. Remember: it’s a lifestyle change, not a fad diet. If your costs aren’t falling or your other (likely more valuable) objectives aren’t being met, reach out for help to experts in the field.

And there you have it! Ready the umbrellas. The next step, now that we are wise in the ways of cloud transformation, is to spread the good word. We must let the world know that the migration itself is but a part of a greater process of modernizing and optimizing our data, analytics and security. Without goals, strategy, tech, team, and process, our umbrellas will catch only the lightest of drizzles – and worst of all, the full potential of the cloud will go unfulfilled.

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Kevin Davis is the global CTO of AWS at Atos, a leader in cloud and digital workplace. He previously served in the same capacity at Cloudreach. He is a passionate technical leader who delivers high-quality, customer-driven solutions leveraging DevOps and public cloud technologies.

The post How to Migrate (Successfully) to the Cloud appeared first on My TechDecisions.

The company’s 2021 Cloud Database Trends Survey of over 120 IT professionals found that 61% of organizations are either fully migrated or are working to complete their full database migration to the cloud, while 36% are either partially migrated or are working on a partial migration.

The remainder, just 3%, are still planning their migration.

According to the survey, 93% agree that storing data cross their organization in a single database helps with standardizing security protocols, especially since 85% of respondents use at least two databases.

Nearly 9 in 10 (88%) say database-as-a-service offerings would help their organization save money, and 87% said such a model can help bridge the cloud skills gap within their organization.

When it comes to the security benefits of a cloud database migration, IT leaders are more likely to name security as a benefit, with 58% of such professionals agreeing. However, just 22% of database admins (DBAs) and 26% of developers agree.

Other disconnects between IT leaders and workers exist when it comes to cloud database migrations, the survey suggests, as 79% of companies who are completing their cloud migration are planning to increase investment in database management and operations, citing increasing needs (45%), demand for analytics (43%) and support for multiple workloads (42%).

However, IT leaders are more likely to cite demand for data analytics than DBAs or developers, as 55% of IT Heads saw higher demand for analytics as key, but only 37% of DBAs and 29% of developers felt that way.

While 52% of IT Heads, including CTOs and CIOs, said database automation will give vendors an advantage, the figure dropped to 35% of DBAs and 26% of developers. A similar divide existed for flexibility and elasticity, with 52% of IT Heads naming those, but only 28% of DBAs and 23% of developers, respectively. Finally, with customer support, the same kind of tension existed: 58% of IT Heads said it yielded a vendor advantage versus 22% of DBAs and 26% of developer, the company found.

The survey also reaffirmed the importance of multicloud as 90% of respondents said they would choose a vendor with multicloud capabilities.

The survey also revealed some concerns among IT professionals when it comes to cloud migration and DBaaS, as 67% of respondents reported challenges in moving to a cloud database.

According to the survey, the biggest challenges cited include:

• 34% – the need for restructuring of apps and databases to make the cloud model work
• 30% – lack of internal skills with cloud-based technologies
• 30% – a delay in cloud migration due to business concerns
• 27% – security concerns
• 25% – incompatible legacy IT setup
• 23% – unforeseen problems once migration started

Among data-specific challenges were data and cybersecurity (43%), increasing volumes of data (37%) and a lack of skilled data professionals (33%).

In a statement, Maria DB Corporation CMO Frank Aman, pointed to the company’s SkySQL DBaaS offering.

“As companies across all verticals face ongoing customer experience, cost and security challenges, there’s no question that an easy-to-use, always available, scalable cloud database is an important part of a strategic technical solution,” Aman said.

The post IT Leaders, Admins Disagree On Key Cloud Database Migration Themes appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Remote and hybrid work models have proven successful and delivered many benefits—such as enabling companies to expand its talent pools—which is why The Washington Post is describing the transition to permanent hybrid models as even more disruptive than the initial move to all-remote work.

With so many employees permanently remote or hybrid, one of the new challenges IT teams must overcome is the increasing content sprawl companies are facing because of it. Especially as governments continue to expand privacy regulations, it is more difficult than ever to manage digital content safely and efficiently.

Understanding Content Sprawl

Before addressing the issue of content sprawl, teams must understand its significance and the challenges it can bring. Content sprawl occurs when users create, duplicate, alter and use unmanaged content to support their day-to-day tasks. With employees working from so many dispersed locations, they often access content by downloading and storing it on devices that may not be secure.

They are also working in collaborative tools and likely sharing documents through several applications, including email. With this increase in digital content assets, it is even more challenging for end users to quickly find what they need to accomplish their work.

See: IT is Begging for Better Management of The UC&C Environment

This negatively impacts productivity and increases compliance risks–dispersed workforces need information available and accessible to relevant stakeholders across many access points without risking security.

With content spread across email, collaborative tools such as Google Workspace, shared drives, Microsoft products, VPNs and more, companies must update its content management and governance strategies to ensure employees have access to what they need, when they need it without having to worry about non-compliance.

Here are four tips to consider in creating and executing a content management strategy:

1. Consider the Employee Experience

When addressing content sprawl in the context of a digital transformation strategy, organizations should first consider how to improve the employee experience. This begins with helping employees do their jobs, access services and accomplish tasks more efficiently–all while mitigating risks that can come from information being misused.

Read: Why Focus on People in the Age of Automation?

A people-first content management strategy requires solutions with integrated user interfaces for locating and managing the information employees need. Tools should be easily searchable and provide a modernized, central point of operations for accessing content.

This means that wherever an employee is working from, they can securely and quickly access the information they need to do their job. As workflows are streamlined, organizations will see increased productivity and improved user satisfaction without the manual processes of managing content.

2. Find Tasks to Automate

IT leaders know the benefits automation can bring, but with so many processes involving high volumes of content, it is difficult to determine which tasks to automate. One place to begin is with any activity that has historically relied on paper documents, something that has become increasingly difficult to manage in the era of remote work.

Vendor invoice processing and financial reporting are perfect examples. A robust content management strategy (and the right tools to execute it) simplifies these activities by automatically capturing and systematically processing these documents, so that invoicing can be an effortless process.

Related: 4 Ways Process Automation Pays Off for the CIO

Business processes that involve content being exchanged through email, such as external approvals and process exceptions, are also prime opportunities for automation efforts. By automating these processes,  documents are secure and easily accessible for anyone who needs visibility into that operation. With those tasks automated, employees can reallocate their time to more valuable work, increasing productivity.

3. Migrate to the Cloud Securely

Work-from-home infrastructure has necessitated new content storage strategies, including increased cloud migration. Worldwide spending on public cloud will reach $332.3 billion by the end of 2021, according to Gartner, as organizations increase its use of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and other cloud applications.

While the cloud enables flexibility to make content accessible, it also further complicates content sprawl challenges. Employees may download and alter content on different devices, introducing security risks and resulting in multiple versions of a document.

For organizations to securely integrate cloud solutions, they must understand the breadth and depth of their data landscape. IT leaders need to know how data is exchanged and altered on both cloud and on-premises storage to understand how cloud migration will impact applications and systems.

To address this, automated change analysis tools can track how data is generated, stored and altered across the enterprise.

4. Prioritize Information Governance

Organizations looking to reduce content sprawl should invest in content management solutions that automate information governance processes to securely manage the content lifecycle and govern who can access, view and modify information. Users must be able to access the content they need without violating corporate governance and government regulations.

To enable this, organizations need a comprehensive and scalable architecture that streamlines processing and response time while ensuring compliance.

From China to the EU, there is increasing regulatory emphasis on protecting personal information, and current information governance processes are failing to meet these standards. While most organizations are attempting to identify, encrypt and monitor access to their content, they likely don’t have complete confidence in these processes.

Effective information governance should ensure that information is classified and managed properly to adhere to internal policies and external regulatory requirements, especially as many users are handling this highly regulated personal information.

Digital Transformation Requires Content Management

As we have seen throughout the pandemic, effective remote work can bring enormous benefits to an organization. To fully leverage these benefits, organizations need robust content management strategy to overcome content sprawl challenges and ensure users have what they need to do their best work, wherever they may be.

By implementing these tips, organizations can increase agility and their ability to comply with evolving regulations so that whatever their future of work looks like, they will be prepared to manage their content assets effectively.

The post 4 Tips for Managing Content Sprawl in the Work-From-Home Era appeared first on My TechDecisions.