Businesses are placing more and more workloads in the cloud. However, a major challenge to cloud adoption is the complexity in implementing cloud projects.

For a firm migrating to the cloud, there are a lot of questions to be answered and decisions to be made. Standard concerns such as which workloads to migrate first, whether to use a private or public cloud or a mix, and what cloud migration strategy to adopt barely scratch the surface of the weightier problems.

With major cloud service providers, CSPs such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, offering thousands of features, cloud migration is like building your lego castle. There are so many building blocks and tons of ways to put them together. 

According to one IDC study, more than 40% of the companies surveyed moved their workloads back to their premises after trying to migrate on their own. When stakes are high with critical business processes at risk, you will want someone to help you make the right cloud choices.  Gartner Research Director, Sid Nag, expects the number of technology service providers offering cloud consulting to triple by 2020. So, how do you pick the ideal cloud consultant and migration partner for your business from this sea of service providers? Here are some suggestions to guide your decision.  

What to Look For in a Cloud Consulting Company

Independent and Unbiased

A consultant is valued for their comprehensive domain knowledge. Sound, unbiased advice on the range of CSPs and available services will help you navigate the cloudy sky. Be it picking a licensing model or evaluating security measures, your consultant team should be able to suggest the ideal option for your business.

Multicloud Savvy

Firms migrate to the cloud for a variety of reasons, including agility and profitability. However, migrating from one platform to another when things go wrong can be costly. A multicloud strategy could mitigate such risks and help avoid vendor lock-ins. So, make sure the cloud consulting company you pick has experience with multiple CSPs, not just one. 

Technical Expertise

You decide to employ the services of a managed service provider because your team lacks cloud expertise. Your cloud consultant better be good at strategy as well as execution. Find someone who’s been there and done it multiple times so that they understand the technical complexity well enough to align technical decisions with business requirements. 

Long-Term Commitment

Cloud migration can be one long project involving multiple teams in your company. The best cloud consulting company is the one that will work closely with your teams throughout the entire journey and until all necessary workloads are firmly established in the cloud. Look for partners that value and maintain long-term relationships.  

Open Communication

Transparent communication and continuous collaboration are essential to ensure smooth deliveries when working with globally dispersed teams. Choose a partner that is committed to open communication and find out about tools and platforms used by the consultant company to collaborate with client teams before you make a decision.

Final Thoughts

It is inevitable for businesses, big and small, to eventually migrate to the cloud. While 83% of enterprise workloads are predicted to be in the cloud by 2020, small businesses are expected to contribute to 44% of the total growth in cloud computing. Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning are expected to drive increased cloud computing adoption. All of this points to the need for a reliable and experienced cloud migration partner. 

When you know what to look for, choosing an expert team for preplanning, migration, and management of your cloud assets is not as challenging.