One of the cloud computing trends I identified referred to custom cloud computing services, and I believe that outsourcing providers will gradually turn into experts in migrating to the cloud and offering this kind of service. Whether you wish to migrate some of your applications or build new ones, a software outsourcing company can help you during this process.
But is the IT outsourcing industry ready for the cloud? Here are some guidelines on how an outsourcing provider can help you with your cloud migration:
- Now that you can store your applications and data into the cloud, just deciding which applications to move to the cloud and how to integrate them with the existing infrastructure can take a significant amount of time. Hiring a specialist in software outsourcing will help you to plan carefully. This is a particularly important service for IT organizations, which have a lot of new processes, technologies, and issues coming at them at once, the implications of which are difficult to understand.
- Outsourcing companies will create software tools to automate migrations and will specialize in certain types of migrations (internal exchange to outsourced exchange).
- Many companies are developing applications that take advantage of the cloud – which will change the way applications are coded. This will increase outsourced development.
- I’ve already noticed a trend in outsourcing providers partnering with SaaS such as the platform and infrastructure providers for SaaS application development. Your IT department can only handle so much. These external providers can manage infrastructure and applications, and build, test, and develop applications and software, taking those tasks off the back of your in-house IT department.
As well as IT departments, the IT outsourcing industry must also change and adapt to the cloud computing trend. Cloud computing integration and migration services are already included in some outsourcing offerings. If you decide to go this route, probably the best advice would be to choose your software outsourcing partner carefully.