The time to move to cloud is now. It’s something said over and over again, and the reality is—it’s not that simple.

For a variety of reasons, enterprises are reluctant to jump into the process, and many don’t know where to start. Whether it’s lack of skills or resources, security concerns during and after migration, or nervousness about losing current investments, there are challenges that must be thought through before tackling migration of any kind.

That is why it is so critically important to select a cloud provider that will offload these concerns and address them head-on. A partner with an ecosystem of experts that will walk you through the process and help you develop a plan. One backed by a platform that is flexible enough to support your business needs at any given time. 

How to ensure you’re thinking about migration and vendors carefully

In the report, Cloud Migration and App Modernization: Complements of a Successful Cloud-Native Strategy, Forrester states that “four in 10 cloud decision-makers wish they had selected a different vendor, and more than half wish they had spent more time choosing their vendor.” This is a troubling reality, and in an effort to provide guidance, Forrester has developed a checklist of nine ways to ensure you’re thinking about migration and vendor selection carefully.

Here are the first five:

1. Focus on security from the start: Security was the most challenging element of both cloud migration (57%) and app modernization (47%). Make sure the platform you select can meet your needs before investing significant efforts in app modernization. According to 90% of decision makers, a strong security process during migration is important.
2. Invest for long-term flexibility: Most enterprises will use multiple modernization approaches (65%), and these efforts will include integration with VM images for the foreseeable future, so it’s important to have a cloud environment that can support both VMs and containers living together along with public cloud native services.
3. Embrace open technologies: With high levels of angst regarding cloud provider selection, firms should select technologies that can reduce lock-in dependencies on a single provider. In particular, invest in container and container orchestration technologies that can run wherever you need them to.
4. Map out an end-to-end modernization approach: The complexity of application migration and modernization makes it even more important to create consistent practices that guide when to move from VMs to containers and redeploy refactored applications.
5. Slow and steady beats big-bang thinking: With all the challenges moving to the cloud presents, it makes sense to keep consistency where possible. Solutions that enable consistent governance policies and security practices reduce two key areas of challenge at the start of migration and modernization.

Moving to cloud strategically

As you move forward—and moving forward to the cloud is essential—remember to build a strategic migration plan and ensure your plan includes a partner that offers flexibility to support where you are now and where you are going. 

• Read Forrester’s full report, Cloud Migration and App Modernization: Complements of a Successful Cloud-Native Strategy, and check out the complete checklist. 
• Learn more about IBM Cloud and IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions.