Taking your business on to the cloud

BANGALORE, INDIA: The most important question to answer after deciding to move to the cloud is the choice of cloud service provider. Here's what you need to know

This is one of the toughest questions to find an answer to, because cloud computing is a vast topic with just about every player offering something or the other in this space. It becomes more difficult because when you move to the cloud, you're putting your trust on someone else for something you've been handling in-house all these years. There are bound to be mismatches in expectations, so you need to choose a CSP (Cloud Services Provider) where this gap between expectations and delivery is minimal. Here are a few factors that must be considered before choosing a CSP.

Data security: Beware of the laws of the land

In our cloud computing survey for SMEs, security and safety of data emerged as the most important criteria while choosing a CSP. A key thing to remember is to ensure that all your data is encrypted, whether on the move or static in the CSP's data center. Moreover, you need to know where the data is kept. If it's stored in a country where the laws of the land can impact the privacy of your data, you may be better off not going for that CSP's services.

Reliability of the CSP: Check its past record and financial stability

Another key factor reported by our survey respondents while choosing a CSP, and not without good reason. Reliability can have many different connotations. It could mean performance of the applications being offered, it could mean no downtime, it could mean that your data is in safe hands, or other things. We've covered many of these points later in this article, but the key thing to keep in mind is the reliability of the CSP itself. It should be financially stable and be there for the long haul. What will you do if your CSP goes belly up one fine day? Will you be able to easily pull out all your data and shift to another CSP? You need to carefully evaluate a CSP on its financial stability in the background before finalizing. Check out its track record, past performance, and market image. They're all important.

Quality of support: How quickly does the CSP respond?

One critical point to keep in mind is the speed and transparency with which your CSP will deal with an outage. Will the CSP promptly and transparently communicate the same to its customers, or will the CSP try and brush it under the carpet and give excuses about service non-availability?

Just because you're moving to the cloud doesn't mean you won't need in-house support. In fact, after signing up, you need to work out what sort of support would the CSP offer, and assign people from your own internal team to deal with the CSP's support team. This actually becomes more difficult because now your in-house support has to deal with complaints from your users and ensure that they're conveyed to and addressed by the CSP.

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Have well-defined billing payment policies

By moving to the cloud, you're moving your IT costs from CapEx to the OpEx model. Instead of owning the setup for a particular application, you're leasing it from a service provider. This completely changes the payment terms, so you have to be more careful in understanding the terms and conditions of making payments. What sort of a payment cycle does the service provider follow?

Is it monthly, quarterly, or annual? Is the payment frequency clearly mentioned in the vendor's end user license agreement?

Moreover, is the service configured for auto-renewal without your knowledge? We've seen cases where you opt for a service for one month, and it automatically sets your payment to auto-renewal. As a result, your credit card gets charged automatically every month.

How transparent is your CSP about the billing and payments? Do you get a dashboard where you can clearly see the services you're being provided and the amount being charged for them? You need to be able to track the usage and ensure there are no discrepancies in the billing.