Contributed by Michael Ray, Solutions Architect for VAZATA.
Transitioning to the Cloud
For all the benefits that Cloud offers, it still represents change — and there are inevitable cultural issues when you ask people to change how they do things like going to the cloud. To help the transition along, lay some groundwork so people will understand how much it can help their work.
Here are some ideas:
- Get executive support – Getting one of the company executive to get behind the switch will move things along much more quickly and people will tend to listen.
- Understand the culture – Cultures that have doing things the same way for the last 12 years tend to be more resistant, so roll out your plan for going to the cloud accordingly.
- Communicate the message – Let people know what to expect, especially those who are most affected by the change. Meetings, memos, social networks or whatever works best for your organization. Just get the word out.
- It’s important to explain the change directly to those whose jobs will be impacted.
- Educate the troops — Everyone in the organization who’s involved with cloud needs to understand three things:
- Why the company is moving some operations to the cloud model
- What the benefits of the move will be for the organization
- How individual people will be impacted by the move to cloud
It’s also a good idea to have a formal statement about the reasons your business is going to the cloud, in case you have to really convince your staff.
- Get people involved — When people feel they’re part of something, they get more interested. Appoint informed people to lead
- Train your staff — Even if you’re just moving to a virtualized cloud desktop, you may still need to do some training. Of course, the type of training will depend on the job function. Training will be required if:
- You’re moving a lot of the workload to the cloud
- Your staff needs to use the cloud provider’s monitoring tools
- There are processes that will change as a result of the move
- You move to a SaaS model for some of your applications
