What to look for in a cloud provider

There is little doubt anymore about the numerous benefits cloud environment offers businesses, from reduced Capex to data accessibility, business continuity, collaboration, security and more.

The first logical step in migrating to the cloud is the choice of cloud model and your migration strategy, so as to have as little gap in service levels as possible.

The cloud deployment model you select, be it public, private, hybrid or multi-cloud, should be based on your business requirements, goals and objectives.

But beyond this, your business needs should also inform your choice of cloud provider. Here’s a checklist to help you select the best cloud provider for your needs.

Match technology to business objectives

Rather than blindly choosing to go with the ‘best’ service provider, base your selection on their ability to deliver to your business goals. Factor in aspects such as workload migration strategies, application management and operations management when shortlisting best-fit cloud providers for your business.

Check Certifications and Standards

Ensure your provider’s certifications match your business interests. The ones that do not should be immediately culled from your list. Different industries have different standards—and security/regulatory needs—but you can’t go wrong with NIST, IEEE, and ISO.

Cross-check Reliability and Performance

Where reliability and performance are two aspects where you must do your due diligence well in advance. In this regard it is vital to verity the providers SLAs during the recent past. It also helps to understand how your provider uses downtime. Finally, ensure you have a robust disaster recovery strategy and that your provider’s protocols match your own.

Double-check Migration Support & Vendor Lock-in

Many a cloud migration has gone astray simply due to lack of support; If you don’t want to be one of those organizations, it’s important to understand what services are provided during migration.

In the same vein, it is important to ensure you’re not locked-into a restrictive business relationship marred by non-standard formats, proprietary cloud APIs, or non-standard cloud web services.

Should your business grow or evolve to a point where you wish to move to a different cloud provider, there should be no obstacles to your exit strategy.

Ensure Data Security and Governance

The importance of data security just cannot be over-emphasized, aside from privacy concerns, leakages can undermine stakeholder & customer confidence and destroy a business’s reputations. So it is critical that the cloud provider you choose has both the tools to ensure data security and is able to use them in a manner that supports your own protocols.

Other points to consider include checking the geographic location of your cloud provider’s servers, in particular laws specific to the region.

Expertise you can rely on

The very complexity of cloud migrations demands a 360 degree perspective unclouded by bias or opinion. Which is why it helps to have the guidance of independent experts in cloud migration and management. As partners to the three highest rated providers: AWS, Azure, and GCP, Teleglobal brings a high degree of expertise you can count on to attain your objectives, via the cloud.

Contact us for a no-commitment consultation, today.