Mitigating risk

In the final edition of the blog I look at how to mitigate any risks from migrating to the cloud.

There is always a risk that costs will increase after the project has started. One reason why this often happens is the assumption that everything you need is included. This may not be the case if the specification is not detailed enough or if business or user requirements change along the way.

The biggest reason for problems during migration or going live is unidentified pockets of activity within the business. Satellite offices operating a stand-alone cloud service; customised departmental solutions purchased independently; ‘maverick’ staff with some IT skills creating individual ‘fixes’ or ‘apps’ that haven’t gone through central IT. These situations are common, especially when you consider how easy it is to just sign up for an online service via a web browser and bypass IT altogether.

These issues can impact the migration and as a result, affect company perceptions of the success of the project.

For all of these reasons, it’s important to pick a cloud partner with extensive migration experience as they will also be adept at identifying potential risks and problem areas such as remote users or remote offices, licencing gaps, compliance constraints, contractual requirements etc. – and then advise how to reduce the risk and keep your project on track for success.

Why you need a partner that understands your business

Although some cloud solutions are relatively simple, it’s not always easy to get exactly the right fit for the business – which means choosing the right partner is crucial. Clearly you need the migration to be successful from the outset, and key to that is transparency, collaboration and engagement with your cloud provider particularly during the planning phase. There are some specific areas to look closely at too.

Before you commit, take a look at your proposed cloud provider’s end-user license agreement (EULA). In particular, check for any limits on what you can do with your deployments. You are likely to retain control of your applications, data, and services, but may not have the same level of control over the backend infrastructure.

Control and flexibility strategies

• Take time to be clear about your responsibilities and the responsibilities of your cloud provider in a shared responsibility model to reduce the chances of an omission or error.
• Clarify the basic level of support provided as well as any additional support tiers and the costs associated with that.
• Delve into the service level agreement (SLA) for the infrastructure and services that you plan to use and how that will impact agreements with your customers.

Vendor lock-in is a frequently cited disadvantage of cloud computing. It can be difficult to migrate services from one vendor to another due to differences between vendor platforms, resulting in additional costs further down the line, or in configuration complexities. For obvious reasons, you want to avoid gaps or compromises made during migration.

Your cloud service should allow the opportunity to improve availability and performance, decouple layers, and reduce performance bottlenecks. Following cloud architecture best practice and building in flexibility from the outset makes moving from one cloud platform to another less problematic should you need to change in the future.

Creating small scale cloud solutions for short-term projects can be expensive if allowed to extend longer term. One of the most significant benefits of the cloud is IT cost savings and pay-as-you-go does offer more flexibility and lower hardware costs, however you do need to keep track of the overall costs.

Cost control strategies

• Avoid over-provision; consider auto-scaling services
• Remember to look for opportunities to scale down as well as up
• Consider pre-payment options for known minimum usage
• Monitor usage and stop services that are not being used
• Create alerts to track cloud spending

Finally, the importance of working with cloud partners who have proven experience gained through multiple migrations shouldn’t be underestimated. Migration projects never become less complex as they evolve – so choosing a provider more likely to have encountered and overcome the issues you face increases the likelihood of a successful outcome for all. And consider how important after support is for your business. If this is an attractive option, or if you have limited in-house cloud experience, then choosing a provider who really listens, who shares knowledge, and that gives direct access to technical engineers when you need them is well worth it.

If you're looking for help migrating your business to the cloud, message me here on LinkedIn, call 07884 264 813 or email [email protected]