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The cloud landscape has changed dramatically over the past decade. Migrating to a cloud infrastructure has become the norm among modern businesses, which is not surprising given all the scalability potential it holds, as well as the opportunities that come with it.
However, with all of this evolution that the cloud has gone through, come various risks and challenges.
Certainly, a business cannot simply choose to move its operations, processes, networks, and other components to a cloud-based architecture without considering all the moving parts that this process involves. Regardless of the size of the company, it is recommended to have professional advice to develop an optimal cloud migration strategy that can perform this complicated task as efficiently and effectively as possible.
That said, here are some basic risks and challenges that cloud computing can involve.
Inaccurate projection of the costs of the cloud migration process
Once you decide to migrate all or part of your infrastructure to the cloud, it is of the utmost importance that you assess the financial cost that your business will have to cover. The move can be an expensive trip (with huge payoffs down the road) and you don’t want to pay too much for any aspect of the process. Certainly, there are some unforeseen costs that are very likely to arise here and there during the migration period, and you would want to make sure that they are kept to a minimum.
Potential data privacy and security issues
Ignoring security risks and data privacy issues is a huge gamble that could – due to a single mistake – lead to your business going bankrupt, especially if your organization is not an enterprise level business. . Sharing applications and managing sensitive customer data across many communication channels is always risky, and the repercussions can be quite devastating in terms of legal processes and the costs they could entail.
The cloud environment involves data transmissions tailored to breaches, unless you take all necessary steps to prevent this potential scenario of data loss (or worse yet – data theft). The regulatory framework can be vague and often depends on the privacy standards of a particular jurisdiction, which means that approaching data security in accordance with best practice standards should be one of your priority tasks.
Fixed contracts
One problem could be that most public cloud computing contracts have fixed terms that leave little (or often no room) for negotiation. This lack of flexibility is usually not a problem for most businesses, but some types of businesses could potentially view some of these fixed conditions as a compromise. The terms of the contract may in some cases be negotiable, especially if the cloud provider is not one of the A-List digital giants, but the level of flexibility usually depends on the cloud service model you choose.
Governance, Control, Compliance
Make sure you incorporate appropriate IT governance that would allow all of your assets to be implemented and used in accordance with all necessary procedures, standards, protocols, and policies. This type of compliance is another top priority as it ensures that all regulatory laws – especially in terms of privacy and data retention – are properly handled and followed.
Make sure you come up with optimal strategies for governance, archiving, and data retention, as these are the unsexy tasks that are seldom fun to perform but require a granular and strategic approach. It’s here that email archiving solutions, a data governance policy, as well as email retention policies come into play. Data, especially sensitive data, and company secrets are the lifeblood of your business, which is why you You need to make sure that all of these policies are properly designed and consistently implemented across all your teams and networks.
Dependence on third parties
It is not uncommon for a cloud computing service provider to become dependent on third-party providers. This could potentially be a problem in a scenario where, for some reason, a third-party provider does not provide its services to the public cloud provider, in which case you, as the end user, may face certain risks, such as loss of your data. . When the relationship between third-party service providers and a public cloud provider becomes messy, cloud providers typically don’t hold themselves accountable for the failure of the relationship. So make sure you have this in mind when choosing your cloud provider.
Migrate all company data at once
Many might see the tactic of migrating all of their business data at once as a way to speed up the whole process, but this strategy often results in more downtime in the long run. Additionally, since data migration is a very serious process, certain issues may arise which could result in the loss of sensitive data and / or critical business or customer data. Therefore, it is recommended to perform this task in stages, or even to perform tests.
summary
The whole cloud computing model and the complicated process of migrating to the cloud must be approached with a fine and well thought out strategy. You should consider all of the potential challenges and have a remedy in place for each. The benefits of moving to a cloud-based architecture are manifold. We suggest that you take data security and privacy very seriously, and your approach to all technical aspects of migrating to and using cloud-based infrastructure should be optimized according to your flow of data. job and the sector to which your company belongs.
We hope that this overview of the potential risks and challenges will not make you hesitate to adopt the cloud model. Remember that the benefits far outweigh the risks. All you need is good planning and flawless execution, and the payoff is just around the corner.
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