How To Avoid Being Blinded By The Cloud

A recent Enterprise Management Associates survey (Network Visibility Architecture for the Hybrid, Multi-Cloud Enterprise) found that 46% of IT professionals admitted that their migration to a cloud-based network created blind spots. Furthermore, the number of blind spots increased directly with the increase in the number of cloud networks deployed, i.e. two, three, or more.

So, what does this mean? Basically, if you’re migrating (or already have) you have some potentially serious problems to look forward. More concerningly, you may not even know that you have a problem, or problems, until an “event” occurs.

Let’s step back for a minute though. If you’re not familiar with the term “blind spots”, blind spots are places where IT engineers and operations personnel are unable to collect monitoring data for performance and security analysis. Obviously, this is bad. If you can’t see a problem — how do you know it exists or even what it is? It’s also much easier to fix a problem that you CAN see.

Here are just a few common sources of blind spots:

• Silo IT – IT and business organizations deploying independent solutions

• Use of virtualization technology – Lack of visibility into East / West traffic

• SPAN port overloading – For physical on-premises / hybrid cloud deployments

• Mergers and acquisitions – The blending of disparate equipment and systems

• Rogue IT – Users adding their own equipment and networks

• Network complexity – Either due to network design or technology choices

Now that you what blind spots are, how do you avoid them? When moving to the cloud, make sure you have all of the facts before you make the leap — as you Do Not want to be blinded by the cloud. For instance, you will want to look out for the following potential problems:

• Security concerns

• Performance issues

• Single vendor lock in

• Complexity due to use of a multi-cloud architecture

• The actual cost may be much higher than you were quoted

Planning is your first step. For instance, maybe don’t move everything to the cloud, just what makes sense. You may very well find that a hybrid scenario using both physical on-premises AND a public cloud network is the right choice to optimize both cost and functionality.

Next, make sure that you integrate solutions into your architecture that give you visibility into both on-premises and cloud networks. This allows you to integrate solutions for on-premises networks, single and multi-public cloud networks, and private cloud networks. With this integration, you get packet level visibility that enables you to accurately address performance, security, compliance, and cost controls in the best possible way.

If you want more information on the five topics above, read this whitepaper. After that, more resources are located on the Hybrid Cloud Resource page.