5 Ways To Stumble Upon The Right Cloud Service Provider

Last updated on March 21, 2014

Before taking the actual plunge i.e. before completely surrendering yourself to the cloud, you need to make one critical informed decision, the repercussions of which are gonna stay with you for the rest of your business life-Choosing the right cloud service provider!

Even if you think your organizational engine is flawless, your cloud service provider is the necessary fuel which is gonna run it effectively. So, in this case, complacency kills!

5 Guiding Ways

Be Country Specific:

• We don’t live in a utopic world and so the cries of ‘Cloud is global’ should be rather ignored as when it comes to setting up your own organization, you need to be as careful as you can when it comes to picking the country of your cloud service provider.
• This is because matters concerning legislation always without fail trump technology.
• If you can find the best one locally, then that would be just the perfect scenario.
• Otherwise, be wary of the nation that you pick as even the most experienced well versed lawyer won’t be able to get your data back in times of duress.
• The simple logic is- If your service provider can decrypt the data and give it to you, it can might as well leak your critical confidential data to someone else as when push comes to shove, nobody’s your friend.

Compliance Standards:

• After you’ve successfully picked a country for yourself, your work doesn’t end there. You need to be cautious about the compliance standards that your cloud service provider actively follows in the daily regime.
• Being on a cloud universally directly implies that you have absolutely no idea where in the world your data is residing. Different nations have different privacy rules and regulations and some countries might not permit you to store your business critical information abroad.
• So, before choosing, carefully assess the provider’s compliance through its history and archives.

Evaluate Disaster Recovery Capabilities:

• Sorry to burst your little bubble but disasters are inevitable. Failures will occur sooner or rather than later.
• Make sure that the zones/domains provided to you for your respective data centers and servers are independent and robust.
• Make sure that the cloud provider you choose provides you with the most transparent backup and recovery schemes by employing encryption, multiple redundancies, dual backups, firewalls and state-of-the-art anti-virus tools.
• Follow the saying, ‘Prevention is better than cure’.

Prioritize Performance Levels & Scalability:

• Every provider around is going to guarantee you the best performance levels ever achieved. Ignore all that blabbering and shed the naivety before making an informed decision.
• Analyze all the proposed performance benchmarks, accountability and support credentials and choose the one which fits you perfectly.
• You need to be aware if the scalability process can be undertaken smoothly without any hassle. Ask yourself- Would there be a seamless integration? Will there be any room for updates or upgrades or modifications? Would the incorporation allow you to add to your existing devices, servers and storage space and allow you to achieve the desired growth levels?

Be Your Own Judge:

• Self reviews: Before taking arguably the biggest decision of your professional life as to who you want to hire as your cloud service provider, do some credible research.
• This can be done through the Internet or by word or by recommendations or by feedbacks from previous end users or by your known accomplices who might already be established in the business world.
• Don’t be afraid or shy to ask around as you wouldn’t want to play the blame-game if things go south.
• Ultimately, the bottom line is that only you know what’s best for your organization.

Conclusion:

Entering the new technology world is scary as it is and the least you can do is bolster your chances of making it big by hiring the apt cloud service provider for the effervescent future of your organization.

The last thing you’d want to do is underestimate the importance of this task. As they say, Never enter a war unprepared.

Fatima Haley, is a technology and gadget aficionado and an efficient writer. Other than working at QuickBooksCloudHosting DotNet she actively engages in forum discussions, writing blogs, guest posts and articles on topics like cutting-edge technologies [Android, Big Data, VoIP & PBX to name a few], latest mobile-apps, cloud hosting services such as QuickBooks hosting, etc.