Powerful tools are great. Except when they’re completely useless.

As I have mentioned more than once in my missives, my career has predominantly been focused on the rather un-sexy parts of IT. The plumbing, if you will. I guess it’s in my nature, because even when we bought our new home almost two years ago, I was more interested in knowing what was inside the walls and how it was put together, as opposed to caring about paint colors and other aesthetic components of the house. Heck, I even remember having to explain to the blundering electrician that he had not correctly wired the CAT6 within the house. (Side note/PSA: in-home WiFi is garbage without WIRED backhaul).

It’s no surprise then to see that, even in the sexy world of Cloud computing, I would find myself in part of the plumbing of this massive ecosystem.

When I got into the cloud space about four years ago, “The Cloud” was where my mobile devices stored “stuff,” and where they streamed “stuff.” That was it. No more, no less. I didn’t care how it got there, and frankly had no interest in knowing how it got there.

FTP, anyone?

And then of course, I got into the cloud space and got really passionate about VMware on Hyper Scalers (VHS) – you know: VMC on AWS, Azure VMware Solution, and Google Cloud VMware Engine, just to name a few.

But even as I got more and more into the VHS world, I realized only with hindsight, that even then I took something for granted. How did “stuff” get onto these new VHS environments (or Public Cloud for that matter)? I didn’t care how it got there, and frankly had no interest in knowing how it got there.

FTP, anyone?

That’s when my eyes opened, and I realized how important the migration to “The Cloud” was in the context of organizations actually reaping the benefits of “The Cloud.”

These last 314 words are not meant to serve as a walk down my personal Memory Lane, or to share with you the rationale behind why I joined my current employer. I’m sharing all this with you because I don’t want you to make the mistake I did and dismiss the importance of being able to quickly and successfully migrate to the cloud.

Migrating to the cloud is a lot easier said than done, and there are many real chances of walking into a minefield. People often assume it happens auto-magically, as if the Fairy Godmother came and changed your pumpkin into a carriage. I’ll argue you might need to use some Chaos Magic instead.

Four hundred twenty-nine words to get to my actual point. Did you catch the news from Oracle yesterday evening? They are now going to offer FREE migrations to their cloud infrastructure, which, presumably, includes migrations to Oracle Cloud VMware Solution.

Side note. The names for the various VHS solutions just roll off the tongue, don’t they?

This announcement is a pretty big deal. Yesterday, before I had the chance to process the news, I called it a “Bold Move.” Now that I have had a chance to ruminate on the announcement, I’ll add that it’s also a pretty risky one.

As I said before, cloud migrations are a lot easier said than done. The various tools available in the market – many of which are already free for you to use – vary widely in their capabilities and the use cases they can serve. For instance, did you know that one of the most popular (and well regarded) tools can’t migrate physical workloads to your shiny new cloud? That just might be problematic…

OK. So let’s assume one of two scenarios. One, your use cases are within the scope of the migration tool you’re planning on using for your migrations. Two, you’ve selected a migration tool that can do everything and anything under the sun…including printing money (link NSFW) should you desire. Now what? Just because you have the right tool, does it mean you know how to actually use it?

Personally, I love to cook…and so I spent waaaay too much money on a great set of knives. In case you didn’t know, there are predominantly two types of high-end knives: German knives and Japanese knives. Generally speaking, Japanese blades are better…more precise, but German knives have a better handle and a better balance in your hand. My knives have “German” handles but “Japanese” blades. Truly the best of both worlds.

And yet, I still have no idea how to carve a bird with them. It’s rather embarrassing, actually. It’s a real hack job.

This is why many organizations rightly look to a third-party “expert” to help them with their cloud migrations. They’ll engage with managed service providers, systems integrators or even the professional services arms of the hyper scalers to conduct those migrations. Those end-customer organizations realize that they don’t necessarily have the right in-house expertise to not only plan for the migration, but have the battle scars to anticipate and pro-actively adjust to avoid the landmines in the field.

But here’s a not-so-pretty truth. Many third-party experts don’t have the skills, don’t have the battle scars, don’t have the scanners to avoid the landmines. They may be ninjas with tremendous knife skills with one tool…but is it the right one for your scenarios, for your use cases? Maybe. Maybe not. There’s a risk.

Oracle announcing that they are going to migrate workloads for their customers for free is a powerful statement. It’s also the right statement. I’ll argue that this should be standard across all hyper scalers and private cloud providers.

Is Oracle capable of doing this for its customers seamlessly? Can Oracle support all the use cases its customers are going to have? Have they seen these use cases before? Do they know how to use more than one tool to successfully execute the migration? Are customers going to be on Oracle Cloud devoid of wounds, battle scars and shrapnel from landmines?

I want to be an optimist, but unless they have not just the right tools, but the expertise and experience, “free” will become “you get what you pay for.”

In that case, hopefully it’s just a flesh wound.