Why does cloud computing fail within enterprises? It’s not the technology—that works fine. The majority of failed projects can be traced back to a toxic culture that killed cloud computing before it got off the launch pad.
How do you spot these issues before they affect your cloud success? Here are three surefire indicators of a company culture that isn’t conducive to the cloud.
The slow walk. This is a passive-aggressive move where teams pay lip service to cloud computing, yet take forever to produce information needed, such as applications and data descriptions for workloads that need to move to cloud-based platforms.
The remedy here is to overshare and help those who are charged with providing information to feel a sense of ownership. This means making sure they are included from the beginning of the project and are solicited for feedback. This can’t always overcome systemic cultural issues, but I’ve found it’s a common way to resolve passive-aggressive behavior.
The security fog. For some time, we’ve had better security on public clouds than on-premises. That said, I’m often taken aback by the number of objections to moving to the cloud that focus on security. I call this the security fog, since people are mistakenly using security as a reason not to move to the cloud, typically because they are in a fog of disinformation and misunderstanding.
The remedy here is again to overshare, educate, and ensure that the correct information is in the hands of those who need to understand both their security requirements and the security benefits the cloud has to offer.
The funding conundrum. When we add up what we need to spend on cloud migration during the next several years, the figure is often more than most organizations expect. Once the sticker shock of cloud computing makes its way into budgetary discussions, we find out that what’s needed won’t be funded. What’s not funded, increases risk.
No easy way around this, other than sticking to your guns on the costs and ROI. Although there may be some ways to economize, or you could even delay some migrations to future years, this often reduces any savings benefits that you could enjoy.