With 1,000,001 potential pathways and variables – cloud migration is a process full of pitfalls. Knowing how to avoid them could save you time and money while providing peace of mind about performance and security.

To help you create a clear, concise plan to get your business to the cloud, our experts have shared the most common cloud mistakes businesses make plus tips on how to avoid them.

Piecemeal deployments

With the public cloud so accessible, it’s tempting to just sign up for a service and hand it to your IT team to get it running. But you can end up with badly designed or over-customised deployments that become expensive blind alleys.Avoid this with:

• expert support
• the right initial platform, properly configured, so you can build on it in future
• training for your IT team.
• a clear roadmap

Struggling to define dependencies

A workload can be simple – a single basic application – or a complex, interconnected web of applications, databases, servers, and other components. Mapping all the dependencies (relationships) within complex IT-delivered services is notoriously difficult.In fact, understanding application and server dependencies is the top challenge in cloud migration.

• Start analysing application dependencies early
• Will you need to link components that reside both on-premise and in the cloud?
• Overlooking dependencies in a migration can cause severe performance issues and paralyse remaining on-premise applications

The solution? Exploit free cloud-based tools like Azure Application Discovery, Migrate or Data Migration Assistant. These analyse different on-premises workloads and show how best to migrate them.

Ignoring the need for training

Training is vital – don’t ignore it. Public cloud is a very different animal to traditional installed systems. IT teams may know next to nothing about cloud applications and make very expensive mistakes. Training is essential.All cloud providers offer a short-course foundation certificate. These are an excellent starting point for your IT team, building familiarity with and confidence in their new environment. Remember you’ll need to train business staff on their new cloud applications too.We hope these tips help you to avoid the most common pitfalls. For more essential reading on public cloud migration, explore our resources below.