Cloud migrations should be based on risk-based business decision. Ensuring that your assets on the cloud are safe is crucial to the overall cloud performance of your organization.
Cloud Migration Strategy
Settling for a single cloud vendor creates the risk of your applications getting locked in the proprietary platform of the vendor. You also need to assess what you need to migrate to the cloud and which ones to retain on-premises. Based on the workloads, data you have, compliance requirements you may be required to use a hybrid strategy. Not being able to frame the proper strategy for the cloud implies that you are exposed to vulnerabilities in security, disaster recovery and others.
Mitigation
To mitigate such a situation, you need to create the cloud strategy after having addressed the following questions
What are my business objectives and how could a cloud strategy complement them?
Do I have sensitive data that should be stored on-premises?
Do I have some mission-critical infrastructure?
What would be the cost of refactoring applications or containerization? This should also include possible retraining and supplemental contract staff for the interim.
What is the expected availability, latency and throughput? i.e., nonfunctional requirements
Should I go for multiple cloud vendors and for what parts of the journey to cloud?
Complex existing architecture
Complex existing IT architecture pose risk while migrating to the cloud. Companies having microservices architecture can use tools like Kubernetes or Docker to orchestrate the containers and migrate with ease to cloud.
Mitigation
Have a complete audit of your IT infrastructure (TOGAF) and map dependencies.
Scaling and Provisioning
How much computing, storage would be required or what would be the best performance to be expected at an optimal cost often causes financial waste.
Mitigation
Right size the workloads and scale horizontally
Move data storage which is less used to cheap tiers
Create alerts to activate when your spending crosses the threshold level
Latency causing damage
While you are accessing services or applications on the cloud, you may face latency issues. This reduces the speed of the workflow, which in turn decreases productivity.
Mitigation
Refactor the applications to make them cloud native. Sometimes, the legacy applications are not compatible with the cloud environment, thereby increasing latency
Create intelligent routes between the cloud and the processes
Use multi-cloud connectivity
Monitoring to identify and remove the network links which are getting congested
Employ end to end QoS on your network
Segregate the traffic flows
A number of posts and comments on these risks would lead many readers to believe that cloud computing (private or public) might never really get off the ground. A couple of counter-points to that impression is that many businesses will explore this option as yet another means of reducing their IT costs, the U.S. government is a big proponent of this concept, as are local and state governments. Time will tell whether the latter point is good or bad for this concept.
What remains as the final argument to these risks is that aside from greater use of virtual technology, which does in fact have more inherent risks in shared environment, these threats are the same in most outsourcing agreements. Due diligence, sensible contract terms and market pressure will improve security and economics will pull the adoption along.
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