This question should be answered on an application by application basis. Business intelligence, analytics, mobile, digital marketing, CRM and email are most notably the easiest applications to move into the cloud. On the other side of the spectrum, it is harder to build a business case for cloud for legacy applications that are customized and compliance-centric.

According to a recent CIF study, 98% of companies have never experienced a breach of security when using a cloud service. When looking to make your move to the cloud, it is important to look for providers that offer encryption, secure VPN, multi-factor authentication, intrusion detection and prevention and more.

In terms of outages, there is always a risk of failure. This is IT - things break. Having a disaster recovery and/or backup and recovery plan should be your norm, in addition to an SLA that addresses your needs in terms of downtime and data transfer.

It is your data. You should never give up any visibility and control of that data. Choose a provider that works with you to make sure that you have the toolsets, control and autonomy to be able to freely move things around to whatever cloud makes the most sense for you.   

Moving to the cloud will shift your budget from CapEx to OpEx, but that does not necessarily mean you’ll save a ton of money. When looking at true costs savings, the cloud can speed up your business practices, potentially speeding up your ROI.