How To Choose Cloud Provider? Making sure you choose the correct cloud providers has become essential to long-term success as more and more IT systems are being externalized. However, there is a sizable market, and there are numerous companies offering a wide range of services. ranging from industry behemoths like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google to smaller niche firms providing customized services.
Therefore How To Choose Cloud Provider out of all of them? The solution is a clearly defined selection and procurement process that is appropriately weighed toward your particular set of needs. Therefore, we have narrowed down the important elements into an unambiguous list of 8 Important Criteria to evaluate.
How To Choose Cloud Provider?
1. Authorities and Standards
The adherence to industry best practices and standards is demonstrated by providers who follow recognized standards and quality frameworks. Standards can be quite useful in narrowing down the pool of potential suppliers, even though they might not ultimately influence which service provider you select.
Moreover, numerous standards and certifications are offered. Some of the most well-known organizations that offer standards, certifications, and good practice recommendations are shown in the image above.
2. Technologies and Service Roadmap
- Technology
Verify that the provider’s platform and preferred technologies support your cloud goals and/or are compatible with your present environment. Do the cloud architectures, standards, and services offered by the provider work for your workloads and management preferences? Estimate the amount of re-coding or customization necessary to make your workloads compatible with their platforms.
- Service Roadmap
Inquire about the service provider’s development plans. How To Choose Cloud Provider? How do they want to stay innovative and expand over time? Does their long-term plan meet your needs?
Commitments to particular technologies or suppliers and the manner in which interoperability is facilitated are crucial issues to take into account. Can they demonstrate deployments that are comparable to the ones you are planning?
3. Dependences and Partnerships for services
- Vendor connections
It’s crucial to comprehend any vendor relationships service providers may have. It is worthwhile to evaluate the provider’s standing with important vendors, their degree of accreditation, their technological prowess, and the staff’s certifications. Do they support environments with several vendors, and if so, what are some good examples?
- Dependencies on other parties and services
It’s crucial to identify any service dependencies and collaborations that are involved in the delivery of cloud services. It must be obvious How To Choose Cloud Provider?, for instance, as SaaS providers frequently construct their services on top of IaaS platforms that are already in place.
4. Support for migration, vendor lock-in, and exit planning
Vendor lock-in occurs when a customer who uses a product or service finds it difficult to switch to a rival. Usually, proprietary technologies that are incompatible with those of rivals lead to vendor lock-in. However, among other things, it can also be brought on by ineffective procedures or contractual restrictions.
Your portability to other providers or internal operations may be impacted by cloud services that largely rely on specialized or distinctive proprietary components. Therefore, this is particularly true if programs need to be redesigned in order to run on a platform provided by a service provider.
5. How To Choose Cloud Provider? Consistency and Performance
You can assess a service provider’s dependability in a number of ways. First, compare the service provider’s performance over the last 6–12 months to their SLAs. While some service providers make this information available, others ought to do so upon request.
Moreover, expecting perfection is unrealistic because any cloud service will occasionally encounter outages. What matters is how the supplier handles the outage. Make that the available tools for monitoring and reporting are adequate and compatible with your overall management and reporting systems.
6. Data management and security
- Handling of data
You may already have a plan in place for classifying data that outlines different data kinds based on their sensitivity and/or stipulates rules for where the data should be stored. Therefore. you should at the very least be familiar with the legal or data privacy requirements that apply to personal data.
- Information protection
Make sure you evaluate the data and system security levels, the maturity of security operations, and the security governance mechanisms offered by the cloud provider. Since the information security measures taken by the provider should be transparently risk-based and support your own security procedures.
7. SLAS, Commercial and Contract
The lack of industry standards for how cloud agreements are built and described contributes to their perceived complexity. Many jargon-happy cloud companies continue to use needlessly complex, or worse, purposefully misleading language when discussing SLAs in particular.
Within our online training program’s lesson 10, we discuss contracts, SLAs, and cloud law. Therefore, How To Choose Cloud Provider? In order to take into account with contracts are:
- Service provision
Be sure that the service and deliverables are clearly defined. Furthermore, clarify the roles and responsibilities associated with the service and how they are shared between the provider and the client.
- Data protection and policies
Consider a provider’s security and data management procedures, especially in light of data privacy laws. Besides, make sure there are enough assurances regarding data access, location, and ownership rights, as well as confidentiality.
- Business lingo
The training session covers a wide range of terminology; the ones that matter to you will depend on your situation.
- Legal Defenses
Accessibility, service availability (often uptime as a percentage), service capacity (what is the maximum number of users, connections, resources, etc.), response time, and flexibility are among the typical service level goals (SLOs) that are covered (or how quickly changes can be accommodated). Depending on how the terms are divided between the contract and SLA, there are frequently additional.
- Cloud advertisements
Each cloud service provider offers a different set of services and a different pricing structure. For various products, various suppliers each have their own special price advantages. Typically, pricing factors depend on the length of usage, while some providers also provide reductions for longer commitments and minute-by-minute usage.
8. Business health and Company Profile
The last criterion for How To Choose Cloud Provider is business health. It goes without saying that it is crucial to evaluate a possible supplier’s technical and operational capabilities. However, you should also give careful thought to the shortlisted companies’ financial standing and profiles. If the cloud service provider doesn’t have a strong business, even the most suitable or competitive cloud service is meaningless. Verify that your primary providers are a suitable long-term fit.
Summary:
In conclusion, identify and validate both the certifications and standards prospective providers adhere to as well as what their clients have to say about them in case studies and testimonials as part of How To Choose Cloud Provider.
Consider the long term to avoid lock-in; staying away from proprietary technologies and having a clear exit strategy can save you a lot of trouble in the future. Therefore, spend time establishing practical SLAs and contractual terms because they are your primary means of assurance that the services will be provided as agreed.
