In 2019 companies plan to spend 24 percent more money on public cloud over 2018 to increase their efficiency and security. Thirteen percent of those enterprises spend more than $12 million a year on public cloud, while 50 percent spend more than $1.2 million annually. But are companies prepared for the challenges encountered with migration of unified communications (UC) environments and data processes to cloud solutions?

Sky Cassidy, CEO of MountainTop Data, says, “Cloud providers will tell businesses how easy integration will be in moving to their system, but after the sale those businesses are often besieged with problems they didn’t see coming when trying to migrate their data.”

Integration capability is one of the biggest areas for potential problems regarding cloud computing. An IT professional could do a great deal of upfront investigation into integration between a cloud and an in-house CRM system, for example.

Cloud provider representatives will often promise implementation support to guide a company through the integration process. However, in day-to-day operation, set against deadlines and workloads, emails and scheduled calls from the cloud provider trying to connect with the client can become burdensome for the client.

Email, still the number one source for online sales, is an example of the importance that cloud email migrations go smoothly and efficiently. It is estimated that 87 percent of online marketers use email, this is more than any other form of lead generation.

Cassidy offers these tips to be followed by both on-premises and cloud providers to offset problems and create a smooth integration of data into the cloud.

• Know exactly what each system will be able to see within the other. You don’t want to unwittingly connect your data to a company that will use it in nefarious ways. This concern doesn’t only apply to small vendors, the big players may be a bigger risk to your data security than anyone else.
• If you’re integrating raw data make sure you know exactly what fields are required/available, and the necessary formatting to seamlessly integrate.
• Once data has been integrated spot check it for issues. There’s always something unexpected. You don’t want to discover that a special character in a contact name caused half of the client records in your new CRM to not import properly.