How to Ease the Transition to Cloud Computing

By Judith Hurwitz, Robin Bloor, Marcia Kaufman, and Fern Halper

The cloud model has lots of benefits, but it still represents change — and there are inevitable cultural issues that arise when you ask people to do things differently. To ensure the success of your new cloud model, take the time to ease the transition to cloud computing by laying the groundwork and helping people to understand how much it can help their work.

Here are some ideas that will help smooth the transition to the cloud model in your organization.

Get executive support

The move to the cloud will be smoother with executive support. If you can get one of these executives to “champion the cause”, so much the better. This person will send the message from the top and people will be more likely to listen.
Understand the culture

If your culture is one that embraces innovation and change, that’s great. However, if your company has been doing something one way for the last ten years, expect resistance and plan your rollout accordingly.
Communicate the message

Take the time to communicate the cloud message to those who will be impacted. There are many ways to do this, depending on your culture: department meetings, memos, podcasts, and internal social networks.

It’s important to explain the change directly to those whose jobs will be significantly impacted. Never underestimate the human side of the equation.
Educate the troops

Everyone in the organization who’s involved with cloud computing 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 computing
It’s also a good idea to have a formal statement about the reasons your business is moving to a cloud, in case you have to really convince your staff.
Get people involved

If people feel that they’re part of the change, they aren’t as likely to resist it. So, get people involved! Form transition committees and appoint people to lead the charge.
Train your staff

Even if you’re just moving to a thin client 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