All CIOs, irrespective of industry verticals would be equivocal in praising cloud computing as a reliable medium of embracing digital revolution. There are radical views expressed by everyone while listing the most ideal cloud service providers. In fact, choosing a perfect cloud vendor is an extremely daunting task because of every vendor has unique attributes and distinct characteristics. Although, the list of important parameters does not cover cost comparison, it can be a deciding factor to calculate savings while comparing cloud services with operating costs of an on-premise infrastructure.
 
However, one must adopt a common system for evaluating a potential cloud service provider by using few significant factors that would be discussed in this article. These attributes can be used to understand whether a particular cloud hosting provider would satisfy business goals of organization.
 
Strong Technical Background

Cloud computing is one of the fastest evolving technologies and therefore a cloud provider without a strong technical team would find it difficult to help clients stay ahead of the curve. On the contrary, a technically brilliant team of software experts can certainly empower organizations since these professionals are able to attend to any complex situation and therefore your systems will always be up and running.
 
Leading vendors in the cloud industry are backed by high degree of technical prowess and therefore their clients are able to perform far better with assurance of round the clock support to resolve technical issues if any.
 
Cloud vendors differ in terms of levels of technical support as some providers offer a basic technical support via chat or email while few are found to assure availability of dedicated personnel for addressing issues on round the clock basis. You need to evaluate vendors by knowing the ease of accessibility of these services even at odd hours.

Packages And Services

This is one the most confusing part of the exercise as every provider has a wide variety of offerings and cloud packages to offer. One should spend enough time to understand suitability of a given plan with respect to individual requirements.
 
On a broader level, one can look for the three fundamental service offerings and study their benefits in terms of organizational needs. If you want to use cloud platform for supporting your company’s software related needs, then SaaS or Software as a Service is the right option.

IaaS or Infrastructure as a Service needs to be adopted In order to fulfill infrastructure associated requirements of individual enterprise. The service is generally referred to as utility computing because it covers consumption of infrastructure resources such as servers, storage, network, and so forth.
 
If you are searching for a service provider that satisfies all platform related issues, then PaaS is the right offering. Many reputed vendors offer Platform as a Service that covers operating systems and databases to name a few.
 
Security And Compliance

Cloud vendor’s approach towards compliance and security can be the most significant factor for selection if your organization is dealing with sensitive or classified information.
 
Every enterprise needs to define individual security objectives and then analyze the vendor’s security measures for final assessment of the cloud vendor. It is also advisable to know responsibility areas of parties that are involved in provisioning security measures in addition to specific mechanisms that are being adopted. This also involves asking upfront questions about measures that would be available to satisfy regulatory requirements of the industry.

Your cloud provider should be capable of addressing compliance related concerns from the industry perspective. These may include HIPAA and other compliance restrictions that may govern the business.

Management Of Infrastructure

Once you are satisfied with the security related criteria, it is time to get a deeper insight about cloud architecture and the processes to align the same with specific workflows of your business. By choosing a cloud vendor with proven ability of consolidation and integration of its platforms with your infrastructure, you will ensure smooth management of business processes in the cloud environment.
 
Service Agreements

This is a vital parameter for understanding how the cloud vendor will guarantee performance of your business by delivering network availability, scalability, technical support, and capacity. SLAs form the crux of the contract between a business and cloud provider since the agreement has legal importance. The Service Level Agreement can be leveraged to define cloud vendor’s responsibility in terms of data security and compliance related provisions.

In Conclusion

These parameters should be used to compare cloud vendors with a deep analytical sense. The relationship between consumer and provider of cloud services must be driven by mutual trust and confidence. As Cloud Service Level Agreements are capable of boosting confidence, customers should make sure that service providers have a proven background in terms of reliability and security. The ideal cloud provider has ability to empower your business by supporting compliance, security, and performance related objectives.

 

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