Tom Joyce

The Risks of Cloud Migration and How to Overcome Them

Migrating to the Cloud has been proven to improve productivity, and has enabled even the smallest business to become truly global.

And yet, there are still organisations that haven’t gone all-in, relying on legacy hardware and software to get critical work done. The problem is – it won’t be long until in-house server rooms and legacy software are all but dead.

Hardware becomes obsolete fast, and maintaining even the simplest server setup is expensive. With rising energy costs, and workforces needing more money to cope with the cost of living, that’s only going to get worse.

Cloud solutions can put an end to all of that. Even in the most complex of computing ecosystems. Private Clouds can be built bespoke in data centres around the world, to achieve practically anything a self-hosted solution can do.

They can do this while being more resilient, more secure, and more collaborative. With a dedicated Private Cloud solution running on next-generation switching, performance can be even faster than a self-hosted solution; with latencies as low as ~1ms at flagship data centres.

While Cloud solutions might lack the immediate access and bespokeness of self-hosted solutions, and can cost slightly more over their lifetime, there is simply no way that a business can exceed what Cloud platforms can offer – unless they are prepared to build their own world-class infrastructure.

Having said all of this, migrating to the Cloud has to be handled with extreme care: especially with sensitive, operations-critical data. These are the common risks of migrating to the Cloud – and how to overcome them.

Common Cloud migration risks

Incompatibility

If the complexity of your current architecture poses a challenge, this can slow the Cloud migration progress down to a halt. To prepare your IT architecture for Cloud migration, you first need to audit your legacy architecture

During this audit, you should find and resolve technical debt, establish which parts of the system are dependent on each other to function, and create extremely detailed documentation – including a roadmap to the goal.

You may find during this phase that you’ll need to adopt a Hybrid Cloud solution – with elements of Private, Public and in-house infrastructure, which facilitate the migration.

Data residency

One of the biggest challenges with Cloud migration is data residency. Some states, including those under GDPR, are strict on where sensitive data can be stored. It might be the case that your data must be stored locally: within the country, continent, or geopolitical region.

Public Cloud solutions are globally distributed, with no single physical location. Data can be moved as the Cloud provider sees fit. This, naturally, is at odds with data residency.

To overcome this, a Private Cloud should be prescribed. This is where you own physical hardware, installed at a data centre of your choice. This keeps all data local, and keeps your business compliant with the law.

Data loss

Moving data always carries a risk of loss. Human error, a poor connection, timeouts, lossy formatting – any number of things can go wrong. At the end of a large-scale data migration, some of your files may be missing, incomplete, or corrupted.

But this can be overcome with good planning and preparation.

An expert-led Cloud migration will counter this with meticulous data backup, restoration, and disaster recovery. Backups will be Cloud-based, on physical media, and reproduced to a high level of redundancy, to ensure that even if the worst happens, your data can be restored with minimal downtime.

The upload and monitoring of data should also be phased, not carried out in bulk – and data connections should have fallbacks in place to allow for continued transfer if one connection is interrupted.

Security

This is a major concern for companies looking to migrate to the Cloud. But it’s not as risky as it seems.

Popular Cloud providers like Azure and AWS provide security as a service – but let’s be real. Security is frankly a non-issue provided that you trust your Cloud partner, and have access and permissions under strict control and monitoring.

Public and Private data centres are extremely secure environments, physically and virtually. If you get the configuration right, your data security will be second to none.

Latency

Cloud migration can introduce high latency times. For most people, this goes unnoticed – but for critical operations or consumer apps, a few seconds of delay can be extremely damaging.

A fleet of Private Cloud installations at local data centres can significantly reduce transfer times – but this can be a costly solution, depending on the scale of your operations. But a Cloud architecture expert can help you design a hybrid solution that fuses the locality of Private Cloud with the cost-effectiveness of a Public Cloud solution.

And that brings us onto costs…

Spiralling costs

As much as 70% of Cloud costs are wasted.

Companies navigating the Cloud alone often fail to establish true needs, and this results in wasted opportunity and mounting costs. Cloud is complex, and fear of loss is often wildly overcompensated for.

But Cloud is also highly scalable, agile, and cost-effective when done right.

A well designed architecture that maximises efficiency can perform exceptionally at minimal cost. It just requires an expert hand – someone who knows how to build reliable, scalable Cloud solutions.

Overcoming Cloud migration risks

Slow adoption and a phased Cloud migration are key to success, and the long-term outcomes for Cloud-based businesses are positive in every way, if it’s done right.

But going slow doesn’t mean putting it off; Atlassian Server is now at end of life, with support ending in February 2024. To phase in and manage your Cloud migration effectively, the time to act is now.

Migrating to the Cloud requires strategy, planning and expert knowledge to overcome the risks associated with it. The best way to reduce the risks of a Cloud migration is to find a trusted Cloud Migration Consultant who has the experience and knowledge to facilitate your move into the Cloud.

That’s always been the case, and always will be. And if you need someone on your side to help – we’re here for you.

Bring a Cloud Migration Consultant into your company

Need someone to help you realise your Cloud vision – with zero downtime, and the lowest possible risk?

Hire a world-class Cloud Migration Consultant through ClearHub, to audit and roadmap your way to success. Everyone in the ClearHub network is vetted, skills-checked and ready to go from day one.

We support all our clients and their Cloud Migration Consultants while they’re on the job, too. Your Cloud Migration expert will have access to our support team, a global network of the tech world’s brightest talent, and a comprehensive knowledge-base.

With ClearHub on your side, there’s no Cloud migration challenge you can’t tackle. Get in touch today:

UK contact: Aaron Rowsell

Global Contractor Manager

Email: arowsell@clearhub.tech

Call: +44 2381 157 811

US contact: David Runyon