Dealing with Cloud Migration Risks in 2023 and Beyond

BySara Suarez

Cloud computing has changed the way we manage business and data. It is no more a trendy science fiction-sounding buzzword, but rather an indispensable part of our everyday personal and professional life. Today Cloud solutions power-up processes of more than 80 percent of companies in some way or the other.

While many of these companies use limited Cloud services, the majority of firms have adopted a multi-cloud approach to manage business workloads. Whether you prefer an on-premise & Cloud approach or a full-fledged Cloud approach, you will enjoy higher affordability, scalability, flexibility, security, and quick disaster recovery once you subscribe to Cloud services.

Though Cloud adoption is largely preferred over traditional computing and data storage methods, many companies are still anxious to make a Cloud transition and perceive that the transition may negatively affect their business. As a Cloud migration services partner, we agree that there are some risks attached to it, but with the right approach and migration tactics, these risks can be mitigated and firms can experience greater reliability, convenience, automation, and security features of the Cloud platform.

Let’s discuss some of the major Cloud migration risks with tips on how to avoid them from occurring in the first place in 2023 and beyond:

1. Incompatible Architecture

Organizations are used to choose the best hardware, industry-standard interfaces, and infrastructure components like firewalls, servers, routers, switches, and storage systems to maintain compatibility. These IT infrastructures are hardly relevant when you move the data to the Cloud as IT infrastructure is delivered as a service rather than as components.

This may leave teams thinking that their existing resources may become useless. But this is not the case. Migration to the Cloud does not mean that you need to transition completely and your existing infrastructure will be of no use. All you need is to hire Cloud migration consulting experts who can re-design in-house IT infrastructure and make it more interoperable with Cloud platforms.

2. Security Concerns

Security complexity is the biggest Cloud migration risk companies face today followed by pricing and legacy infrastructure concerns. There are many threats on the Cloud such as insider threats, malware, external attacks, misconfigured servers, insecure APIs, contract violations, compliance breaches, etc. While these threats can put your critical data at risk, all of these risks can be overcome by following strict security compliance and precautions.

To avoid security concerns, you should subscribe to leading Cloud solution provider such as AWS and Azure. If you are looking to migrate to a SaaS solution, Salesforce or Dynamics can be good considerations due to their strong data encryption, firewalls, and multi-factor authentication capabilities. Before selecting a Cloud vendor, make sure their compliance services take into account FIPS, HIPAA, ITAR, DISA, and other guidelines. We will suggest organizations hire experienced Cloud migration consulting experts including some DevOps engineers to strengthen their security protocols.

3. Data Mismatch or Loss

Before proceeding with Cloud migration, create a backup for the files you want to move. This will help you deal with corrupt, incomplete, and missing files – errors you most likely encounter during the process. Having a backup will allow you to correct the errors by restoring data to its original state and making changes in it to make it compatible for migration.

Power outages are another major concern that can disrupt migration processes or cause data loss. Having a backup will allow you to quickly restore replicas of data and prevent any losses. We suggest teams configure data backup for migrated data to save on costs and time. Additionally, availing service of multiple Cloud service providers will save you from critical downtime and losses.

4. Investment Wastage

Cloud vendors offer flexible pricing models which can be availed as per one’s budget and business needs. Despite this, one-third of business spending on Cloud technologies goes wasted. This is largely due to overspending followed by less usage post realization. To prevent this from happening, you can onboard Cloud migration consulting experts.

Onboarding professional consultants help teams in understanding their data processing, storage, and transfer requirements, assist in buying licenses, and provide support for the best license and cost usage. Since Cloud requirements keep changing as you grow, it would be a wise move that will help you prevent overspending on non-essential Cloud licenses/packages.

5. Higher Latency

If your processes are time-critical where customers, users, and stakeholders communicate instantly, you just can’t tolerate any unexpected delays. But extra latency is a genuine possibility as you transition data to a Cloud. The main reasons behind extra latency can be anything from misconfigured QoS (quality of service) to the large geographical distance between server and client devices.

By following the right steps, you can very well put extra latency concerns to rest. There are many ways to solve latency problems:

  • You can divide traffic flows
  • Optimize and localize the network
  • Offloading the internet at the end
  • Establish multi-cloud connectivity

While latency issues could very well be addressed, if the aforesaid Cloud migration strategies seem costly for you, or do not solve the purpose, consider keeping such apps on-premise.

6. Less Visibility and Control

While you can take complete control of your enterprise data in an on-premise setup by installing network, data center, and physical hosts locally, you will lose data control and visibility when migrating to a Cloud.

A survey conducted by Dimensional Research also confirms this. As per the survey, 95 percent of respondents said that they experienced visibility issues post-migration which caused network and app performance issues. While 38 percent of respondents highlighted inadequate visibility as the main factor in app outages, 31 percent claimed network outages as the main factor.

Several tools can help you deal with app outages and network performance issues. Several third-party security vendors and Cloud-service providers offer solutions with automated responses, easy configurations, strong analytics, and higher monitoring capabilities, you can choose suitable packages as per your business needs or goals.

Bottomline

Migration to Cloud services can speed up your process execution, automate workflow, reduce operational cost, and add convenience to data management, monitoring, and analysis. Despite these benefits, there are several risks attached that can impact business performance and cause multifarious losses. However, this should not prevent you from exploring the great capabilities of Cloud platforms. To prevent potential losses and ensure a risk-free migration, businesses should follow migration practices and guidelines of established Cloud migration services partners.