Riding past the cowboy Cloud providers

Back in the mid to late 90s when the use of IT in business began to become mainstream, a group of opportunistic so called ‘experts’ sought to exploit the naivety of many companies by charging extortionate prices for substandard services. Thankfully, those days are long gone but it seems that history could be repeating itself with the advent of Cloud computing. 

 

 

The Cloud hype is leading many organisations to see this as the next big business ‘must have’, but right now there’s a risk of rushing to the Cloud and getting their fingers burnt. Even the big players are failing to provide adequate Cloud services with the likes of Amazon and Microsoft BPOS suffering from high-profile outages and data breaches. Unfortunately, these mistakes from less experienced providers are giving the wider Cloud computing market a bad reputation. In fact, research from software company, Compuware found that 57% of businesses are slowing down or stopping adoption of Cloud applications until performance and security issues are resolved . 

 

So, where does this leave businesses today? When it comes to deciding on the Cloud , there are ways to identify the good from the bad providers; businesses just need to know what to look out for so they can reap the benefits of the Cloud rather than fall victim to large-scale outages. 

 

 

Before embarking on any Cloud crusade, it’s important for businesses to first ask themselves what they perceive as important from a Cloud service and what they really need. After all, what’s essential in terms of services offered can vary from one business to another. 

 

When evaluating a potential provider, their overall commitment to the Cloud is a key indicator of those that are more experienced. Businesses should be asking: how long they have been providing Cloud services for? What proportion of the business is dedicated to these services (i.e. do they have other more lucrative revenue streams)? How many existing customers do they have and within which sectors? The answers will indicate the level of expertise and experience of a Cloud provider. For example, if an organisation in the education sector was looking to move to the Cloud and there were no reference customers within this field from a particular provider, it might be advisable to go elsewhere. Due diligence checks should also confirm whether the provider is in a good financial position and large enough to implement and support Cloud services on an ongoing basis.

 

Another aspect to consider is the range of services and products offered. Businesses may find that many Cloud providers will just offer products from one vendor and in some cases, offer services that are from third parties that they have no control over.  Benefits can be gained from using the ‘best of breed’ products from different vendors for certain applications. This not only ensures that better services and applications are provided, but also avoids vendor lock-in, which can be restrictive for businesses today. After all, you don’t want to force your business down a one way street and not be able to change with the market. 

 

Similarly, when you look under the hood of the Cloud services platform it should also be based on ‘fit for purpose’ technology. All too often Cloud providers will go with one technology solution such as using only one virtualisation vendor in their data centre. As a result the strength of their Cloud offering is restricted by that specific vendor’s ability to deliver innovative products. It’s important for a Cloud provider to have the flexibility to use the latest innovations, which in turn ensures their customers benefit from high-quality Cloud services.

 

 

Once businesses have covered the basics, they then need to look at (and negotiate where possible) the Service Level Agreement (SLA) and there are specific clues to help identify the best ones. 

 

One of the causes of Cloud outages such as those recently experienced by Microsoft customers, is that the provider only has one data centre available for all its end-users. Putting all your eggs in one basket in this way is clearly risky territory, as if there is a failure and no back up available it is likely that all customers will be cut off from services, which is unacceptable. Businesses should therefore be looking for those that have multiple data centres offering greater redundancy and that clearly outline this in the SLA. A clearly stated compensation guarantee for any downtime would also be beneficial and shows “skin in the game”

 

In addition, businesses should be looking at what jurisdiction is provided for the data, as data that is secure in one country, may not be in another. They need to make sure that their data is correctly and legally held, while also be able to easily access it if the contract is suddenly terminated. This calls for an SLA that offers transparency of data and customer control over where it resides. This helps give peace of mind over any privacy issues they may have.

 

Finally, businesses should be looking carefully at what level of service availability and ongoing support is offered from the provider and their disaster recovery plans. Ideally, help should be on hand 24/7 so that problems can be solved through a simple phone call to the support team with clear contingency plans in place for emergencies such as data loss or major outages. In general, a three nines or four nines guarantee, where service uptime/availability is guaranteed 99.9% or 99.99% of the time will always be the better options to look for. 

 

 

As businesses increasingly become reliant on IT, one of the main benefits of the Cloud today is that it removes the headache of managing IT themselves, as a third-party expert provider can host and manage their entire IT infrastructure. This means IT departments are then able to focus on delivering strategic business value, rather than simply maintaining and updating services or solving day-to-day IT issues. Furthermore, as different services and applications can be added or removed on a monthly basis, it provides the scalability and flexibility needed for business agility, so that businesses are only using the services they really need. Financial benefits can also be gained by reducing or eliminating capital and management costs, while keeping businesses up to date with the latest technology but, this needs to be calculated as it’s not always cheaper. If all of this is provided, along with a high standard of service availability and support, businesses can have greater confidence in the Cloud .

 

However, organisations are only able to maximise on these key benefits if they choose the right service provider. By siding with the true experts of the Cloud computing world that have good credentials and strong, clearly defined SLAs, businesses will be able to emerge from what seems like the Wild West and ride past the cowboy Cloud providers.