Question

Migrating to the cloud is a not an easy decision for a CEO or a CIO to make. There are major risks involved in moving to the cloud. Risk management of cloud migration is, thus, a subject of growing importance and interest to many organizations.

Identify and explain at least two risks faced by an oorganization when it moves its IT infrastructure to the cloud. Additionally, propose strategies to mitigate the risks you have identified.

Answer 1

Risks faced by an organization when it moves its IT infrastructure to the cloud and strategies to mitigate the risks are following (These are just 2 risks and there are many more):

1. Data loss - Data can be lost while moving to cloud as there can be many issues related to internet or somehow data transfer not successful because of errors. Also, data can be lost on cloud because of lesser security.

Strategy to handle this risk is to keep backup always and if possible then in multiple locations so that data is not lost or compromised in any way.

2. Cost management - Pricing models of Cloud providers are flexible but takes lot of time to be optimized and this is not one day process but needs to be done regularly to ensure low costs.

Strategy to handle this is to ensure that cost optimization should be handled before moving to the cloud and also should be optimized regularly.

3. Added latency - Cloud providers may have their resources in different region than your company and users. So, this will have an added latency for users which will not be good for user experience.

This can be handled by choosing the cloud location as close to your users and choose those cloud providers which are available in more regions.