David Egts, chief technologist for the North American public sector business at Red Hat, wrote in a GCN article published Tuesday that agencies should have a safety plan in place for their cloud strategies to protect their organizations from high egress costs associated with transferring data and applications from one cloud platform to another.
Egts said agencies must have an exit strategy prior to signing an agreement with a cloud provider and consider how much they are willing to spend on a cloud platform.
“Having an established cost threshold gives agencies a clear set of financial expectations when they enter into an agreement. That’s the basis of an exit strategy,” he wrote. “Agencies that can keep an eye on costs throughout the course of their engagement with their cloud provider will have a better idea of when it’s time to make a move.”
Agencies should think about portability when developing apps to facilitate their movement across clouds to prevent “proprietary, cloud vendor-specific services,” Egts said.
He noted that agencies should integrate a contingency or a backup plan into their cloud strategies. “Cloud providers that have locations in multiple regions can provide redundancy in case of an outage.”
