In the first 4 parts of this series, we defined the Cloud and discussed some of its many advantages. Which brings up an interesting question—“Are there any potential pitfalls of migrating your business to a Cloud Computing environment?” We’ll explore that issue in this post.

One issue that has to be addressed when planning a Cloud migration is the connection to the Internet. Most businesses only have a single Internet circuit. If the Internet circuit goes out, most employees can still do a limited amount of work on their personal computers (PCs). As long as the Internet outage doesn’t last too long, it isn’t a debilitating problem (some would argue that due to the proliferation of cloud-based applications like email and Google Docs, this statement is debatable).

But in a Cloud Computing environment based on desktop virtualization, an Internet outage means that employees do not have access to their desktops until Internet service is restored. Obviously, that is not a good situation. So how can this risk be mitigated?