How do I mitigate and manage the risk of moving to the cloud?

Can you describe some of the concerns about which you are thinking? Your question is so open-ended that a bit of definition would be helpful.

I agree with Michael - the question is too broad. However, I will say that decisions around cloud go beyond the CIO. Trust is at the heart of adopting a cloud migration. It's less of a factor when outsourcing non-critical functions, and success here helps build a case for using the cloud for more core functions. Many businesses may already be using the cloud, but they just don't know it. If so, the track record may already have been built, and that would help IT make a case for more extensive outsourcing.

The technology issues around cloud are of course vital, but I cannot really speak to these. I just wanted that establishing sufficient trust is one of the key best practices for a cloud migration. Trust can be defined in many ways, and to me is just as important as the underlying technology.

Hi Eric,

which Cloud part do you mean, and to what extent? IaaS, PaaS, SaaS? Which parts of your business do you want to move where? Static parts, dynamic ones, business-critical or core-business?

Why do you want to move what where? What are the costs, the returns?

A best practice for this moment would be to answer those questions, I think. It strikes me as extraordinary that you seem to have made up your mind about making the move to the Cloud and having to mitigate and manage that, without precisely knowing what it that move will consist of...

Eric,

Which risks are you most concerned about?

For that matter, why has your organization chosen to move into the cloud?

-ASB

The "soft" approach I recommend is to start with implementation of a rapid, verifiable ROI service complementary to existing in-house core-competency operational functions which is not fully addressed by existing IT services. This complementary service could relate to something like process intelligence - a capability which produces verifiable ROI. In this way, an existing operationally vital service is not being moved, but the broader sense of cloud-based service viability and some discrete ROI can be proven. What I propose deals only with establishing common, positive "perspective" between business, operations and IT work groups. Further organization movement into cloud service adoption will be more successful on this foundation.