With several business operations taking place in the cloud, the cost of a poor cloud optimization or cloud misconfiguration can get out of control. This is why it’s important to know all about cloud computing challenges that organizations need to address.
1. Backing Up All Types of Data
Often, managers back up only some portions of critical data. They are late to realize that they are missing crucial pieces of information. For instance, don’t only consider backing up the information stored on your servers. If your office allows BYOD policy, make sure to back up that data as well.
The most overlooked data form is emails. In many cases, these emails are saved in employee’s systems without being archived. If there’s critical information in those emails, it could easily be lost in the future.
2. Protecting Cloud Data
Another common cloud computing mistake occurs when companies overestimate their role in securing cloud data. Your cloud service provider is not solely responsible for your data protection. Therefore, you need to encrypt your data. For this purpose, the 256-bit encryption is a reliable choice. Another protection measure is to invest in a proper key management solution, monitoring and authenticating the roles assigned to each member.
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3. Conducting Business Analysis
You can’t reap the complete advantages of cloud computing if you don’t have a well-planned and well-documented use-case for cloud migration. Whether you are moving your existing application to the cloud or planning to build a cloud-hosting application, conducting a business analysis is necessary for streamlining the process.
So, what benefits does the cloud offer to your business? Here are some considerations:
- Do you want your cloud applications to run faster?
- Are you looking to minimize the costs required to run cloud applications?
- Would you like to optimize the performance of the existing cloud applications?
From the business’s perspective, every component of your cloud strategy, from the tools and resources you are going to use to your choice of cloud service providers, must be well thought-out.
Bear in mind that not all cloud service providers are the same. Every platform has its own unique list of features and specializes in addressing a wide range of problems. Assess whether your cloud service provider can meet your application requirements and offer enough flexibility and scalability.
4. Agreeing to a Cloud Service Level Agreement (SLAs)
According to the Cloud Standards Customer Council, cloud service level agreements (SLAs) are written expectations for services between cloud providers and consumers. As per the Council, organizations must study the SLAs for the following:
- Assess disaster recovery plans
- Understand roles and responsibilities
- Reflect on privacy and security requirements
- Understand service and deployment model differences
- Understand the exit process
5. Determining the Right Bandwidth
Evaluating the appropriate amount of bandwidth depends on the types of services being delivered, along with the client expectation. The cloud experience is heavily affected with sluggish Internet and performance.
Apart from bandwidth, latency is also an essential consideration. While latency issues don’t affect all applications, such as email, for others it can be really damaging. With VOIP services or trading applications, latency is a must-have consideration.
6. Designing for Failure
Similar to conventional IT architecture, downtime is common with cloud servers as well. The best solution for this scenario is to design your architecture by anticipating failure.
When you design for failure, it includes configuring safety nets to make sure that resulting outages would cause only minimal damage. By doing so, you end up incorporating a fault-tolerant architecture that is also cloud-optimized. The recovery planning is built directly into the design itself, offering optimal output and ensuring minimal loss, even if you face downtime.
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7. Move Everything in Stages
Many companies assume that once they decide to embrace the cloud, they should migrate everything to the cloud at once – a common misconception in the industry.
Not all platforms or applications are appropriate for cloud use. In fact, some legacy software or applications are harder to maintain in the cloud, and thus should be left to the on-premises infrastructure. A better strategy is to opt for a hybrid IT environment that merges both conventional on-premises servers and cloud platforms. If you are uncertain about which application would be better off in the cloud, contact us and explain your concerns in detail.
8. Forgetting Your People
Sometimes, cloud migration is seen as merely a simple IT project. However, don’t forget about your team or else your cloud migration is likely to face potential setbacks. When you move to the cloud, it introduces new work practices to your organization. This is why you ought to prepare your people for the shift.
In several cases, the cloud empowers companies to improve the pace of their decision-making, utilize business process automation, and streamline various processes. As a result, there’s a need to redefine certain roles and responsibilities. Hold discussions with your people and explain how their teams will have to adopt and what benefits they can expect to get from leveraging cloud-based services. Make yourself available to respond to any queries regarding the cloud migration.
More importantly, collect feedback regarding the cloud migration from your people. As first-hand users, they have a lot of fascinating insights on what works and what doesn’t, and how to make improvements.
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Final Thoughts on Cloud Computing Challenges
Over the years, many organizations have encountered the cloud computing challenges mentioned above and had to deal with significant shortfalls. To make sure you avoid going down the same path, contact us. Our cloud computing architects can help you get the most out of the cloud.
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