Cloud Migration Risks and Mitigation Strategies

September 30, 2021

Moving to the cloud is profitable only if you know the risks associated with the cloud and the mitigation strategies. Ensuring that your assets on the cloud are safe is crucial to the overall cloud performance of your organization.

Below I have listed the most prominent risks and their mitigation strategies

1. Not having an apt cloud migration strategy

You can opt for single cloud providers or multiple providers. 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-premise. For example, you may have sensitive client data which you may need to retain on-premise and just use the cloud platform for computing, connectivity and scaling. 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. Some common security problems that may set in with faulty cloud strategy are

Misconfigurations
Unauthorized access
Insecure interfaces
Account credentials exposure and hijacking

Accompanying it, the cost of operations may also increase with a faulty cloud strategy. Of course, you don’t want to increase the cost of operations by migrating from legacy infrastructure to the cloud.

Mitigation

To mitigate such a situation, you need to create the cloud strategy after having addressed the following questions

What are my business objectives for migrating to the cloud?
Do I have sensitive data that needs to be stored on-premise?
Do I have some mission-critical infrastructure that is best-stored on-premise?
What would be the cost of refactoring applications or containerization?
What is the expected availability, latency and thorough put that I should be achieving on the cloud?
What is the capacity I require to attain?
Which cloud providers are offering features that best suits my migration and operation needs on the cloud?
Can I go for multiple cloud vendors and for what parts of the journey to cloud?

And more

Once, you detail out every aspect of these questions, the cloud model you choose would be more fitting to your needs

With a clear migration strategy, you can reduce expenses and system downtime/failures

2. Complex existing architecture

Complex existing IT architecture pose risk while migrating to the cloud. A lot of time, investment is spent making the infrastructure fit for the journey 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, devise out parts of the architecture that are functionally bound, map dependencies and then create a comprehensive list of components that are viable for migration.

3. Data Loss while migrating to the cloud

During migrations, there are chances of modification of configuration files, corruption and loss of data files.

Mitigation

No data should be moved from its current location on premise unless backups are taken for those data. Employ managed file transfer during migration

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4. Waste of investment

Cloud vendors offer different instance types, transfer and storage options based on use cases and the performance expected by the company. Companies that have not audited or researched out how much computing, storage would be required or what would be the best performance to be expected at an optimal cost often waste their investments in the cloud.

Mitigation

Remove unutilized or underutilized instances
Right size the workloads
Move data storage which is less used to cheap tiers
Create alerts to activate when your spending crosses the threshold level
Check for latency wasting your bandwidth

5. 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 SD-WAN for choosing the best path between the cloud, data center and processes
Use multi-cloud connectivity
Use SNMP monitoring to identify and remove the network links which are getting congested
Employ end to end QoS on your network
Segregate the traffic flows

If properly planned, monitored and implemented all the risks associated with cloud migration can be negated and your journey to cloud can be rewarding.