Skip to main content

Cloud Performance Monitoring - Lift & Shift Doesn't Work

Keith Bromley

With all of the hype around cloud computing these days, it's a wonder that IT departments haven't come to an absolute standstill due to a bewildering amount of confusion. Don't get me wrong, cloud computing has clear and definite benefits. At the same time there is an excessive amount of vendor hype that it will fix a lot of problems which it will not. It can also create new problems with a lack of visibility and many IT professionals are disappointed with their leap to a pure cloud environment.

9 out of 10 respondents have seen a direct negative business impact due to lack of visibility into public cloud traffic

Consider this. A survey performed by Dimensional Research for Ixia showed that 9 out of 10 respondents have seen a direct negative business impact due to lack of visibility into public cloud traffic. This includes application and network troubleshooting and performance issues, as well as delays in resolving security alerts stemming from a lack of visibility.

In addition, Sanjit Ganguli of Gartner Research also conducted polling on public cloud migrations at the Gartner December 2017 Data Center Conference and found that 62 percent were not satisfied with the monitoring data they get from their cloud vendor now that they have moved to the cloud. In addition, 53 percent actually said that they were blind to what happens in their cloud network.

While not all cloud migration problems are avoidable, many can be. Specifically, performance issues are a real consideration for new cloud networks. Once you migrate to the cloud, and during the migration process, you will not have clear network performance data within your environment. It is up to you to implement this, if you want this visibility. The tools that the public cloud vendors provide will not be good enough.

Business intelligence applications are one example of a problem area. After porting the service from your completely controllable on-premises environment to a public cloud instance, you may find that it runs slower (after you receive multiple customer complaints). The "lift and shift" concept failed. The result is often an increase in more CPU, RAM, and interconnect bandwidth. This creates an unplanned and perpetual cost increase.

Another example is that you cannot natively tell how your applications are truly performing or even how your cloud instance is performing. Is it meeting or exceeding the service level agreement (SLA) that was put in place? Your cloud vendor will probably tell you that it is, but you have no independent data for a "check and balance" strategy on what they are delivering.

So, does this mean you give up using the cloud, hopefully not. There are clear business benefits to the cloud and to prolonged hybrid cloud solutions. The answer is to do a thorough assessment of what you are migrating and then perform baseline performance monitoring before, during, and after the move.

For instance, during the migration process, proactive performance monitoring of both your on-premises and cloud environments will be useful. Test the performance yourself to characterize how it is actually working at all phases. With the right tool, this testing can be fairly painless. An alternative is to copy and export cloud data back to your on-premises performance monitoring tools (assuming that you are operating a hybrid cloud environment) for analysis there. Many organizations that just blindly port services and applications to the cloud encounter cloud computing issues quickly, particularly performance issues.

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Cloud Performance Monitoring - Lift & Shift Doesn't Work

Keith Bromley

With all of the hype around cloud computing these days, it's a wonder that IT departments haven't come to an absolute standstill due to a bewildering amount of confusion. Don't get me wrong, cloud computing has clear and definite benefits. At the same time there is an excessive amount of vendor hype that it will fix a lot of problems which it will not. It can also create new problems with a lack of visibility and many IT professionals are disappointed with their leap to a pure cloud environment.

9 out of 10 respondents have seen a direct negative business impact due to lack of visibility into public cloud traffic

Consider this. A survey performed by Dimensional Research for Ixia showed that 9 out of 10 respondents have seen a direct negative business impact due to lack of visibility into public cloud traffic. This includes application and network troubleshooting and performance issues, as well as delays in resolving security alerts stemming from a lack of visibility.

In addition, Sanjit Ganguli of Gartner Research also conducted polling on public cloud migrations at the Gartner December 2017 Data Center Conference and found that 62 percent were not satisfied with the monitoring data they get from their cloud vendor now that they have moved to the cloud. In addition, 53 percent actually said that they were blind to what happens in their cloud network.

While not all cloud migration problems are avoidable, many can be. Specifically, performance issues are a real consideration for new cloud networks. Once you migrate to the cloud, and during the migration process, you will not have clear network performance data within your environment. It is up to you to implement this, if you want this visibility. The tools that the public cloud vendors provide will not be good enough.

Business intelligence applications are one example of a problem area. After porting the service from your completely controllable on-premises environment to a public cloud instance, you may find that it runs slower (after you receive multiple customer complaints). The "lift and shift" concept failed. The result is often an increase in more CPU, RAM, and interconnect bandwidth. This creates an unplanned and perpetual cost increase.

Another example is that you cannot natively tell how your applications are truly performing or even how your cloud instance is performing. Is it meeting or exceeding the service level agreement (SLA) that was put in place? Your cloud vendor will probably tell you that it is, but you have no independent data for a "check and balance" strategy on what they are delivering.

So, does this mean you give up using the cloud, hopefully not. There are clear business benefits to the cloud and to prolonged hybrid cloud solutions. The answer is to do a thorough assessment of what you are migrating and then perform baseline performance monitoring before, during, and after the move.

For instance, during the migration process, proactive performance monitoring of both your on-premises and cloud environments will be useful. Test the performance yourself to characterize how it is actually working at all phases. With the right tool, this testing can be fairly painless. An alternative is to copy and export cloud data back to your on-premises performance monitoring tools (assuming that you are operating a hybrid cloud environment) for analysis there. Many organizations that just blindly port services and applications to the cloud encounter cloud computing issues quickly, particularly performance issues.

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...