Key Assessment Criteria while Choosing a Cloud Service Provider
Cloud is the most talked about subjects in IT circles. Technology organizations are stressing the need for cloud adoption due to multiple advantages such as safety, economy, and greater productivity.
However, selection of cloud service provider can be an extremely overwhelming task due to the fact that businesses need to practically offer an unrestricted access to their critical data. In addition, a cloud provider is going to influence almost every aspect of the business on daily basis.
Importance of security parameters while choosing any technology solution is a foregone conclusion. However, you need to assess many more aspects of a cloud service prior to the final selection of a cloud service provider.
Following are ten of the most vital questions you need to ask your prospective cloud provider before taking a plunge.
What different types of cloud services are being offered?
By understanding your needs and specific objectives for moving to cloud, you can match the types of services that are available with cloud provider. One needs to confirm whether the cloud provider has ability to fulfil your unique requirements to meet your cloud objectives.
Understand price structure of cloud services
Cloud helps you pay for what is being consumed by you. However one needs to rule out excessive upfront costs, since major service providers do not follow such norms.
What are the security credentials of cloud service?
While choosing a cloud service vendor, one must pay close attention to security and backup practices. The security measures include physical as well as network security. These can be assessed by appointing independent auditors. You should make sure that your mission critical data will be protected from security breach. Cloud provider must have procedures in place to verify clients regarding an event of data breach and the subsequent steps to be taken.
Special attention must be paid to presence of compliance in terms of industry specific regulations put in place by the government. Ideal compliance includes regulations such as HIPAA for companies that deal with healthcare industry.
Location of data centers
You should be aware of the place where your data is stored. This highlights need to ask about the data center location and its specifications including Tier Level, security measures, and more. Make sure that he data center facility is not prone to various acts of God including earth quakes, snow storms, floods and tornadoes.
Who will have access to view the data?
You need to ensure that your data is accorded exclusive privacy it deserves by way of placing seamless controls and defining the people who will be able to access the same. This will be critical for organizations that have multiple departments and hierarchies. Ideally, the data needs to be made available to concerned staff on the basis of users.
What about scalability in case of demand fluctuations?
Your storage requirements are bound to increase in response to your business growth. This calls for the need to choose a flexible cloud provider that supports scalability. You can find out the amount of storage resources that can be additionally procured in the event of sudden surge in traffic. Cloud provider should also make enough room to accommodate additional accounts to support your expansion plans.
What are procedures for setup and access?
Cloud provider may guide you regarding login process and other steps involving configuration of accounts and user addition. There are many cloud providers who will provide online guides instead of helping you through the setup procedure.
Accessibility to cloud services should be enabled by the cloud service provider so that users can access business related data from any location and at any time.