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Most Cloud Migrations Miss the Mark on Budgets, Scheduling
Over half of cloud migration projects finish behind schedule and over budget, according to a newly published report by Velostrata.
The provider of cloud migration services recently polled over 200 IT pros around the world for a study co-authored with IT research firm Dimensional Research. The vast majority of respondents (96 percent) were in the middle of, or have completed, a cloud migration project in their organizations.
Quizzed about the challenges they faced in moving applications to the cloud, the respondents gave a sense of having had many of their ambitious plans thwarted.
Almost two-thirds (62 percent) reported that their first attempts at migrating to the cloud were either "more difficult than expected" or failed outright. A similar amount (64 percent) said they finished their migrations later than expected, and over half (55 percent) exceeded their budgets to do so.
Respondents cited a litany of issues contributing to their migrations falling behind schedule. Nearly six in 10 pointed to both "competing IT projects" and "lack of expertise" as reasons for delays, while about five in 10 identified both "security concerns" and "lack of resources" as scheduling speed bumps.
These challenges exacerbate an already lengthy timeframe for cloud migrations. Just over a quarter of respondents expect their migrations to be completed in a year or less, while many more (73 percent) foresee their migrations taking one to two years, or even longer.
Also adding to the complexity of migrating workloads to the cloud is the fact that more and more organizations are choosing to go the multicloud route. Nearly 70 percent of the survey respondents said they migrated applications to more than one cloud provider in a bid to avoid vendor lock-in (58 percent) or to take advantage of different platforms' cost and functionality benefits (77 percent).
While that's good news for hyperscale cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, which together make up the most popular multicloud combination, it's perhaps just another hurdle for IT shops or partners trying to finish their migrations on time.
The full Velostrata survey's findings can be downloaded here for free with registration.