Managing the Move to the Cloud

Gartner predicts that spending on the cloud will increase in the next year by 16%, more than three times the rate of increase expected in IT spending generally. That would indicate that many companies will need to pay attention to the management of the transition to the cloud.

One point is immediately clear - many of the same issues are going to arise as in any IT migration - the need to test before cut-over and the need to manage process change being two examples. Other issues may not be quite as obvious.

Companies need not and in many cases should not use a single supplier. In the cloud, this can be a challenge, and there is a new breed of service providers who act as cloud brokers, to guide people through the labyrinth of issues.

Also, and this is better known, it is important to pay attention to where your data is going to reside. Different jurisdictions have legislation that covers the management of data that resides in their jurisdiction. For example, the EU Privacy Act limits the transfer of private data outside the EU. And the US Patriot Act makes the data available to certain government and regulatory bodies. As a minimum, the company needs to know the location of its data and have a grasp of the governing legislation and how it fits with home legislation and relevant contracts.

For an excellent article, which provided much of the source of this article, check this link.