The Hidden Costs of Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid cloud migrations can work. But they can also be painful if the company or organization does not conduct thorough cost analysis and adaquate planning first. Not everything will migrate to cloud easily or quickly, and it's important to take into account several hidden costs that may arise throughout the process.

1. Security and compliance: Maintaining security in a hybrid cloud environment requires additional considerations and measures. So you may need to invest in security solutions, tools, and have additional expertises to protect data and applications across cloud environments while still covering costs on-prem. Compliance requirements may also introduce additional costs, such as auditing and ensuring adherence to regulatory standards.
2. Data transfer and network costs: Moving data between on-premises infrastructure and the cloud can incur huge additional costs, particularly if you have large volumes of data. Migration issues that prevent seamless integration between active directory, LDAP, and internal resouces can quickly result in security road-blocks that end up creating extended always-on conditions that run up utililization costs and overhead managing two different systems of authentication. Pay-as-you-go pricing can accumulate exponencially as network charges and data transfer fees accumulate; especially if you need to transfer data frequently or in significant quantities between local and cloud based resources to maintain home directories or access to data lakes. Special consideration should absolutely be given to any large volume data solution before migration and even seemingly innoculous systems should be reviewed extensively before migration starts.
3. Integration and compatibility expenses: Along these same lines, integrating and ensuring compatibility between your existing on-premise systems and the cloud environment will be complex and as such requires budgeting additional development resources. Before going into a migration to cloud it will be paramount that sufficient developers are aquired and deployed to all teams and that these resources are accounted for in migration budgets early enough to give them sufficient time to familiarize themselves with the functionality of the systems they're automating. Without these resources the scope and duration of the migration cannot be properly assessed.
4. Training and re-skilling: Do not burn bridges with existing teams or sunset applications and tools prematurely. Training your team or hiring professionals who are experienced in managing hybrid cloud setups is important. Hybrid cloud environments often require cross training skills and knowledge on the part of your IT staff. But as long as on-premise systems are in place, ensuring sufficient staff and resources to maintain existing systems is absolutely critical.
5. Monitoring and management tools: In a hybrid enviornment, security tools need to accomodate the organizations current state and not just the anticipated need after migration is done. Any outliers have to be accomodated in the security plan. Managing and monitoring hybrid cloud deployments effectively necessitates duplication and integration of tools, 3rd party involvement, and new software solutions. These tools themselves may come with licensing fees or ongoing subscription costs that should be factored into the overall budget if the outliers can't be sunset in a timely manner.
6. Downtime and performance optimization: Ensuring optimal performance and minimizing downtime in a hybrid cloud setup may require infrastructure modifications, performance optimization efforts, or capacity planning. These activities can lead to additional costs for hardware upgrades, system tuning, or engaging consultants. It is also incredibly hard to do effectively when too many systems are transitioned simutaneously. When planning and budgeting downtime its important to consider not only what systems are migrating, but how many, how do they relate to each other, and to find ways to avoid running these efforts in silos.
7. Vendor lock-in: Choosing specific cloud service providers or technologies for your hybrid cloud environment means you may face potential vendor lock-in that adds hidden costs later. Switching later could result in migration costs or difficulties and it's therefore crucial to consider the long-term implications and potential exit strategies.
8. Increased complexity and management overhead: This can be especially difficult when upper managment has committed to unrealistic timelines or budgets based on operational costs of cloud-only solutioning with the intention of migrating and instead find themselves maintaining a hybrid enviornment out of necessity for an extended time. Hybrid cloud environments introduce additional complexity compared to traditional on-premises or cloud-only setups. Managing and maintaining these environments also require more resources and expertise, leading to increased operational costs which sometimes appear to completely negate the benefits sold them when the project was started.

Cloud computing offers several cost benefits compared to traditional on-premises infrastructure. But this can change dramatically when hybrid gets involved. The move to cloud needs to focus on cloud readiness before migrating; not after. This is especially true in regards to resources that integrate AD, encrypt data, validate security certificates, ensure adherance to controls, etc.; or any systems which could create unseen vulnerabilities when moved. Don't just assume that these aspects of the system can be resolved later.

Before moving to cloud, engage with experienced consultants or cloud migration specialists that don't specifically represent the interests of the vendors. Assume the larger the organization the longer it will take to migrate and don't rush or underbid the process. Once the project begins, migrate solutions with dependancies one at a time and employ people that can help in identifying and managing both sides effectively.