Five cloud pitfalls that create data management problems

Migrating to the cloud is now a key IT strategy, often used to enable digital transformation, for almost every organisation. No matter how big or small, or what sector they operate in, almost all have benefits in flexibility and agility to gain from moving some or even all of their data and applications to the cloud.

However, the move to the cloud does not always result in better data management. It can create unforeseen complexity. It can reduce visibility, moving data to places where it can no longer be easily seen or controlled. And even though the cloud, in theory, increases possibility for innovation, collaboration and creativity, if users cannot access the information they need then those benefits will go unharnessed.

Here are five common pitfalls to avoid in your cloud strategy if you are to achieve improved data management from a cloud migration.

Integrating legacy IT systems is a complex challenge whether you are working on-premise, with a private cloud or a public cloud provider. Legacy IT systems may not interoperate smoothly with other applications, meaning that data stored in one system cannot easily be shared with another, so separate systems cannot ‘speak’ to each other as they need to.

As such, your cloud strategy needs to ensure that legacy IT systems that are not being refreshed are nonetheless modernized by use of middleware, in the form of data and API integration.

For data to be useful, your organisation needs to be able to access it and query it with ease. After all, information in its raw form doesn’t do very much – you need to be able to turn that information into tangible insights and action. In practice, this means knowing where different datasets are stored, and having an interface through which those datasets can easily be accessed and manipulated.

If your data is inaccessible in the first place, then simply moving elements to the cloud from on-premise storage may result in simply recreating the problem in a new application. A data and API integration platform may be needed to continuously and seamlessly connect applications and their underlying data together.

Many businesses try and create data warehouses as part of a cloud move, so key data sits in one place.