Wednesday, March 16, 2011

How to Choose the Right Cloud Computing Vendor

It has been noted by multiple advisory and analyst groups, that there's an awful lot of interest in the cloud area right now. It’s not surprising that business see benefits in the cloud services and cloud providers are in great demand. But can all companies quite deliver on the services they're promising? How to choose the right partner in the growing number of cloud providers crowding the market nowadays? You definitely want to do more than type the names of a few providers in a search engine. Selecting the right cloud services provider is a critical step to ensure that they can deliver on the promises offered by cloud computing.

Patrick Grey, president of the Prevoyance Group, and Charles King, principal analyst of Pund-IT, help to sort out the problem and give their tips and expert advice on the best way to seek a cloud computing vendor. Below are a couple of guidelines they suggest:

Use metrics. Set benchmarks to measure good performance. Be realistic, though: 100 percent isn't always achievable, but maybe 99.9 percent is.

Network. The best resources for choosing prospective vendors are other IT decision-makers and other vendors. "You would be well-advised to touch base with vendors you work with closely," says King. "You basically have to get out and work the networks and see what you can find."

Make a test case. A good way to test a prospective vendor is to give them a non-essential part of your business first. And only then you can eventually move more critical pieces over.

Consider data storage and security. Take a look at how a cloud provider's data storage, data security and security infrastructures work. How do these firms protect your data? What kind of security measures are in place?

Use a service-level agreement. For critical, sophisticated or big projects, include a service-level agreement detailing which metrics need to be met and what penalties will ensue if they're not met.

Source: NewsChannel 5

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