Top five myths when migrating to the cloud

For many companies, migrating to the use of cloud services is already well underway and for those that have not yet begun their cloud journey, the beginning is near.

Like any major alteration though, there are lessons to be learned from those that have ‘seen the movie’ before. While there are a number of areas that necessitate significant assessment, we have listed the top five incorrect assumptions that can lead to problems when migrating to the cloud.

1. Everything can move to the cloud

Many businesses are being driven to begin the use of cloud services without an appropriate understanding of what they are really attempting to accomplish. Without a proper cloud readiness assessment this can seriously delay their progress and in some cases it may even require the migration to be aborted or reversed. Each system, application, service and/or product needs to be considered not only by its individual requirements but also those interdependencies that it shares with other component parts of the existing infrastructure.

2. The internet supports all my needs

The ever-present nature of cloud services lends a lot of its capability to the internet. This typically allows easier access to services and a more flexible platform with which to manage them, however attempting to transfer a service to be consumed in this way is not always the correct thing to do. Many existing applications are better served by older protocols, a lot of which do not have suitable encryption or security considerations. The consideration should be that a move to cloud can often be facilitated even without internet connectivity.

3. Networking is dead

Cloud service providers have made a concerted effort to ensure that connectivity is a simple thing. Anybody who has a reasonable understanding of infrastructure, code, automation and scripting can get things working with relative ease. That being said, networking isn’t dead and the lack of skills in understanding the best architecture from a networking perspective often leads to environments where ‘things just work’. A strong network architecture is perhaps more important in cloud computing than it has been in more traditional environments, especially as there will likely be a ‘hybrid architecture’ in most organisations for quite a long stretch of time.

4. Security is just NSGs

Network Security Groups (NSG) can be considered the most basic of Layer 4 firewalls. They serve in the main to ‘shape’ the permissions for who can consume a service or application within a certain part of the cloud. They are, however, not even remotely close to being an appropriate choice for a valid security device, yet they are often implemented as the only means of securing the infrastructure. With a number of services being exposed to the internet, and with cyber-attacks on the increase, security in cloud is vital and NSGs do not cut it. They are too often used as an excuse to bypass the security posture within an organisation by falsely being represented as having dealt with security concerns.

5. Everything is cheaper

Cloud has provided businesses with a fortune of commodity offerings. For example, businesses can now scale up their infrastructure on demand, paying for only what they use and only when they use it. The governance and control over spending is often overlooked or lost altogether. Whereas a physical piece of infrastructure used to need spend control before any purchase order was raised, this can now be achieved with the click of a button.

Everything the cloud promises should be considered as the ultimate endeavour. Enthusiasm should however be curbed to ensure that accurate decisions are made at the right time and for reasons that benefit the business, ensuring maximum return can be attained for the effort.

Justin Day has 17 years’ worth of experience in IT working almost exclusively in networks and security and has extensive knowledge in cloud computing. Previously, he has worked for major corporations including Aviva and Vodafone where he was responsible for their IT network infrastructures. 

Picture credit: iStock/Rick_Jo