Switching Cloud Providers Is No Cakewalk, but Do Your Users Know That?

Grazed from CIO. Author: Paul Gillin.

Wikipedia traces the first use of the term “write once, run anywhere” to 1996. A Google search turns up 139,000 occurrences of that phrase. So why is the dream of absolute portability still elusive 20 years after it was first described? The cloud was supposed to make portability easier. In theory, fully virtual environments should reduce dependence upon underlying hardware, and cloud providers typically offer a choice of platforms and tools. Once an application is in the cloud, it should move anywhere else pretty easily, right?

Unfortunately, no two IT environments are exactly alike and the cloud is no exception. Users may not know this however. When the IDG Enterprise 2014 Cloud Survey asked if switching from one cloud provider to another is more or less difficult than switching from one on-premise provider to another, 29% of IT leaders said it is more difficult, compared to 22% of non-IT leaders. More than 40% of the non-IT leaders said they just didn’t know…

Ignorance isn’t bliss in this case. The reality is that moving between clouds can be very challenging. While cloud providers do all they can to make it simple for customers to move applications to their platforms, they don’t necessarily make it easy to leave. Cloud computing is evolving its own unique brand of vendor lock-in, but there are precautions customers can take to make migration easier…

Read more from the source @ http://www.cio.com/article/2922771/cloud-computing/switching-cloud-providers-is-no-cakewalk-but-do-your-users-know-that.html