7 Risks In Cloud Migration And How To Avoid Them

Who hasn’t embraced the cloud yet?

Cloud computing is a buzzword these days, and rightfully so. The advantages of cloud migration are numerous. However, in the rush to adopt the cloud, organizations frequently underestimate the risks of cloud migration, such as data loss, additional latency, lack of visibility, security breaches, and so on.

According to a Virtana research, 72 % had to migrate applications back on-premises after transferring them to the public cloud due to a range of issues.

As a result, in this article, we’ll go over the top cloud migration risks to avoid in order to safely transfer your applications and data to the cloud.

Major Cloud Migration risks need to avoid

  • Not having a proper migration strategy

You must choose between using a single cloud provider and managing several cloud platforms. Each strategy has its own set of benefits and drawbacks. There is a risk of vendor lock-in if you choose just one cloud service.

On the other hand, you can, make your code work with several cloud providers and balance workloads over multiple cloud platforms. It is more expensive and complicated because each provider offers distinct services and management tools, but it allows for greater flexibility.

AWS + Microsoft Azure is a popular multi-cloud combination today. According to McAfee’s Cloud Adoption and Risk research, 78 % are leveraging both AWS and Azure to prevent common cloud migration risks.

Furthermore, you must decide what will be moved to the cloud and what will remain in on-premise data centers. If you decide to use a hybrid strategy, make sure you plan accordingly. Not every aspect of your infrastructure is suitable for migration. Keep the data and financial records of the client off the public cloud.

Store sensitive data in on-premises data centers and use a public cloud platform for scalability, flexibility, and computational strength.

How to avoid it?

Even if someone suggests it, don’t get too excited and rush into migrating your workloads to a cloud platform. What is good to an organization might be harmful to your company. Without appropriate planning and a robust cloud migration strategy, you may face system failures and huge expenses.

  • Extra latency

Unwanted latency is one of the most overlooked risks in cloud migration. It can happen when you use cloud-based apps, databases, and services. Customer experience is especially important for IoT devices, e-commerce websites, video streaming systems, and cloud gaming platforms. If your apps require quick responses, a delay of a few seconds can be disastrous for your organization. It can cause annoyance and disappointment, as well as ruin your brand’s reputation.

How to avoid it?

To avoid latency issues, first understand what causes them: geographical distance between client devices and servers or misconfigured Quality of Service (QoS). There are several methods for resolving latency concerns.

  • Localize and optimize the network
  • Segment traffic flow;
  • Establish multi-cloud connectivity
  • Offload the Internet at the edge
  • Connect to business partners and ecosystems for digital commerce and/ or data exchanges

If the above-mentioned solutions don’t help or are expensive for you, consider keeping such applications on-premise

  • Inadequate Preventive security checks

The issue is that most firms lack trained security personnel who can ensure the total security of shifting your business to the cloud. As a result, crucial information can be lost for the most insignificant of reasons (such as uploading malicious data to the cloud or not having good virus protection)

How to avoid it?

You might not have the expertise of a specialist to resolve all of your cloud migration issues. The system administrator will not handle the transfer of your critical data to the cloud because they lack deep technical knowledge. The best approach is to hire someone who specializes in outsourcing. This way, you will receive high-quality assistance at a reasonable cost.

  • Loss of control over data and processes

Back up all of your data, especially the files you’ll be moving, before migrating to the cloud. You may encounter issues such as missing, incomplete, or corrupted files throughout the cloud conversion process. If you’ve backed up all of your data, you can easily fix the problems by restoring the data to its prior state.

How to avoid it?

Data loss can result from anything from a security breach to a power outage at a data center. So, whether you save database backups on the cloud or on a server, you can quickly restore all of the data.

Furthermore, if you use multiple cloud providers, you won’t have to worry about a single provider’s service failing unexpectedly. You can always release an independent clone of your software on another provider’s infrastructure.

Make sure to configure the backup of the migrated data to save time and money. Remember to back up your old system so you can recover any missing files if necessary.

  • Incompatibility of existing architecture

Many businesses discover that one of the most significant risks they encounter during cloud migration is the complexity of their existing IT architecture. It slows down their migration because they need to recruit people with the necessary IT expertise to complete the entire architecture for the cloud at the required speed.

How to avoid it?

Hire a team of IT professionals to resolve tech debt, examine historical architecture, create detailed documentation, and evaluate interconnected sections in order to prepare the architecture for cloud migration.

If you wish to create a hybrid environment by combining private and public clouds with on-premise assets, you should redesign your internal IT architecture to minimize interoperability and inconsistencies among several platforms.

Conclusion

Moving to the cloud is not just a challenge, but also a chance to improve the agility and innovation of existing business operations. As a first step, you must inventory all infrastructure components, business processes, and in-house knowledge available to you, and develop a strategy that addresses all of your organization’s cloud migration requirements.

Stellar Digital can help you plan and execute a cloud migration strategy. Being a reputable software development company. We have a team of experienced developers and IT specialists who can assist you with your cloud migration. Get in touch with us at stellardigital.in.