Cloud and cloud adoption risks

Cloud and cloud adoption risks

(c) Damir Lukić, Virtual People Ltd., 2016

Cloud Meteorology?

How, what, why?

Change of paradigm

Cloud concept is not new

Public transportation (Greek mythology) – public cloud

Mainframe computers from 1950’s – private cloud


Cloud computing By definition, cloud computing represents computing resources (HW

and SW) provided to end-users on-demand via network

Term ‘cloud’ comes from the abstracted representation of complex IT infrastructure invisible to end-user (hidden in the cloud)


Cloud computing - types Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

Platform as a service (PaaS)

Software as a service (SaaS)

Storage as a service (STaaS)

Security as a service (SECaaS)

Data as a service (DaaS)

Database as a service (DBaaS)

Test environment as a service (TEaaS)

Desktop virtualization

API as a service (APIaaS)

Backend as a service (BaaS)


Cloud computing highlights Lowered costs

Agility

Dynamicity, scalability and elasticity

High availability

Simplified administration

Improved security

Controllable via API

Mobility

Virtualization

Shared resources



Cloud migration Why migrate to the cloud?

Which cloud computing properties give weight to such decision?

What does cloud migration represent?

How to properly plan the migration?

What to expect during the migration process?


Cloud migration - planning Address all identified risks

Experienced project manager

Experienced team of consultants and engineers

Documented processes and systems that are going to be migrated


Risks – Which cloud provider to choose? Most of cloud providers are US-based companies

Amazon, iLand, Google, Microsoft, Softlayer, Rackspace, GoGrid, IBM, HP, Oracle, itd.

Carefully examine contracts and guaranteed SLA Learn more about known service disruptions

Learn more about customer support quality and overall customer satisfaction

Research cloud migration strategies – which migration concepts could be used with the particular cloud provider

Before migration, proof-of-concept is a MUST in order to identify most of the risks Will save lots of headache later


Risks – Human resources Carefully choose the migration team

Project manager – requires expertise in similar projects, something very difficult to find today

Development engineers – must have knowledge about the migrated application as well as the new cloud environment in order to quickly solve issues

System engineers – must have knowledge about the existing and the new system

Motivation and stimulation of the project team becomes VERY important at the final stages of the project

Pay attention to cultural differences Especially important if offshore teams are used


Risks - Documentation Probably the highest risks in cloud migration projects

are

Non existent documentation of the business process

Lack of business process understanding by the project team


Risks - Availability Impact to the availability of the system could be a

problem due to very short maintenance time on critical systems

There are concepts and applications which could be used to do the so called live migration – migration with minimum downtime requirements (measured in minutes)


Risks – After-migration problems Most of the problems are identified during risk

assessment in the proof-of-concept phase

There are always problems which pop up after the migration

Experienced team comes into play here


Risks – Laws, regulations Cloud migration projects might be impacted by local

laws or regulations

Private data privacy protection

Company data privacy protection

Find cloud providers which meet your compliance requirements



Where to spend the budget? Consulting

Redesign business processes and make them more efficient

Manage the data and in-house knowledge more efficient

Invest in risk management

Invest in business continuity

Improve IT services Invest in high availability (backup/DR)

Invest in data security

Invest in training and role change of your employees

Marketing – better visibility to customers

Innovations – develop new businesses and markets


Backup/restore The purpose of a secondary copy (backup) is to return

the state of data to the specific point in time

Most cloud providers offer integrated backup or snapshot service from the front-end UI

Standard data backup tools can still be used in order to back up internal data (DB, AD, etc)


High availability High availability is a property of the system which is

resistant to loss of one or more building blocks

Disaster recovery solution requires building up an entire environment on a secondary location and replicating data between sites

In case a cloud environment is used to build up a secondary location, DR solution can be very cost effective

Possible combinations Primary environment on-site, DR environment in the cloud

Same cloud provider, different datacenters (regions, continents, etc)

Different cloud providers


Cloud environment security Cloud providers invest a lot in security

Amazon and Google do not reveal locations of their datacenters

Datacenters are heavily guarded

Physical access control (cards, biometry)

Logical access control

It’s up to the customer to solve his cloud environment security Migrating to the cloud should unlock funds in the

budget to implement security without the need for additional funds


Compliance All important cloud providers meet several compliance

certifications SOC 1 / SSAE 16 / ISAE 3402 SOC 2 ITAR FISMA Moderate ISO 27001 ISO 14001 PCI-DSS Level 1 HIPAA CSA (Cloud Security Alliance) MPAA


Cloud today and in the future Today

Cloud computing is currently in early-adoption phase Every day, lots of new customers are onboarding the cloud Those who migrated are very quickly seeing cost reductions

Future Unlocked funds in the budget can be re-routed to something

else Investment in more intelligent software applications Investment in mobile devices which allow employees to work

from home Huge cost savings in business operation costs (office costs, internet

connectivity, cars, etc).

BYOD – bring your own device concept


Damir Lukić

[email protected] www.virtual-people.com

+385-91-1337-955


mailto:[email protected]




http://www.virtual-people.com/



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Cloud and cloud adoption risks