Hi, everyone. Lee from Everything Tech.
For the third time in as many weeks, I met somebody who’s SharePoint migration, or Cloud migration, has failed. And it got me thinking why do so many people’s migrations from the cloud … You know, you got a server and you perhaps don’t want to have a capital expenditure of renewing that server, and you want it work more efficiently and collaborate better.
Why do people fail when trying to achieve that? It sort of bugged me a little bit and I thought a lot about it, and I think it’s probably because of two things.
The first thing is the senior decision-maker or the business owner feels compelled to make use of the Cloud, to adopt Cloud technology, just because it’s a big buzz word in the industry. And they go hell for leather asking their IT provider to get them into the Cloud. They don’t get sufficient buy-in from the team, and the team just assume that you’re going to move them to a new version of yellow folders. They’re so used to working with documents and data on the server, it’s difficult for them to adapt.
And when you move to SharePoint, you do have to adapt. It’s a completely different technology. It’s got tons of benefits if you can adapt. But it really is a different way of working, and it doesn’t lend itself. You can use it in Windows Explorer like the yellow folders that you’re used to using, but it doesn’t really lend itself to doing that.
So you got to change the way you work, and you got to get buy-in from the team. And if you can get that, it’s a fantastic technology.
I think the second reason is that Cloud services and certainly things like SharePoint, they’re not for everybody. If you’re a digital agency for example, and you’ve got tons of movie files, you’re probably using very little Microsoft Suite … You’ve not got tons of spreadsheets and tons of Word documents. What you’re mainly working in is Adobe.
And really, SharePoint is built for people that heavily utilize the Microsoft Suite. Say if you’re an architect or you’re an engineer or something like that. The predominant document type in your organizations is going to be DWG files or that kind of thing. It’s not going to be too many Microsoft Word or Excel files.
So people need to carefully consider whether SharePoint’s for them. And if it is for them, and they’re prepared to train their people and adapt the way they work to receive all the benefits, then it’s a great technology.
But that’s my thoughts on why people’s SharePoint migrations fail.
If you’d like to talk to us about utilizing the Cloud, and we’re experts at getting people into Microsoft SharePoint and getting the buy-in of the team, and providing that training. That’s the most important part, showing people the benefits that SharePoint can bring if they’re prepared to adopt the technology.
We comment on SharePoint migrations because we do them day to day for customers all over the UK. Get in touch with us today and we can help you migrate to SharePoint without all the hassle and worry of it failing.
