It’s no secret that businesses enjoy all sorts of benefits from cloud migration. However, despite the many advantages to migrating storage, processes, and services to the cloud, many businesses offer certain cloud objections when the conversation comes up. Are you interested in pushing your customers towards cloud migration but are encountering resistance?
Expense: “Cloud Is More Expensive than On-Premises!”
When businesses price out the process of moving to the cloud, sometimes it’s true that a cloud server is more expensive than an on-premises equivalent. This is a big hurdle to overcome in a world that’s extremely cost-driven, but it can be done. The key here is to focus on the comprehensive value and ROI of the move, not just the top-line cost difference.
With a cloud migration, you gain a degree of reliability, flexibility, and scalability that on-premises just can’t match. There’s a massive return on investment here, as businesses gain access to rapid provisioning and dynamic usage, which is the ability to add or remove resources based on need/usage. When faced with an objection about expense, make sure that the objector is counting the entire cost—not just the raw price of on-premises hardware.
Internet Dependence: “One Outage and Everything Is Toast!”
Cloud infrastructure is entirely internet-based, which can lead to some well-intentioned objections regarding access: What happens if your internet connection goes down? Customers may say that you can’t operate without these systems, so they’re too important to relegate to the cloud.
While internet-based outages are a risk, they are no more significant than the corresponding set of risks you’ll take on by staying with on-premises. And there are many ways to mitigate these risks, too. For example, you could implement a backup internet connection with a failover solution so that when your primary connection goes down, you’re automatically moved to another. Additionally, if an outage is severe or lengthy enough, you can still access cloud services from anywhere else there’s a connection. The same cannot be said for an on-premises outage.
Data Accessibility: “We Don’t Want Hurdles Between Us and Our Data.”
This final objection has to do with perceptions. Since “the cloud” is out there, seemingly far away, people may feel that their data is walled off or difficult to access. There’s a comfort and familiarity to the files physically living on machines in the basement or a few floors away.
In reality, this comfort is an illusion: the data is no more or less accessible regardless of the location of the server or its backups. What’s more, with cloud data, users with the proper credentials can access their data from anywhere, with no added security risks. All business cloud data is encrypted and protected, and that protection is managed by the cloud provider.
As an MSP, education about the cloud is key so that you can provide your customers with all the relevant information about migration. We hope that these tips will help you to address the cloud concerns of your customers and prompt swift migration to the cloud.