Once you’ve already decided to go ahead with the transition of moving to the cloud, you sort of need that helping hand which comes in the form of a cloud hosting provider. Your choice can make or break your future for it is a critical one-time only decision.
Even if you have an infallible perfect setup for your organization, your cloud hosting provider is the one who is going to implement all that in real time. Here are few points you should consider before going ahead.
Tips To Choosing Your Cloud Hosting Provider
1. Evaluate availability and disaster recovery capabilities
Many public cloud service providers for their own good tend to rent space from co-providers or architect multiple locations at close proximity within a particular domain. Make sure that the zones are independent and fault-immune which depicts that the failure of one shouldn’t affect the other.
Since failures are inevitable, make yourself totally familiar with your provider’s disaster recovery capabilities. At minimum, there should be redundant copies of your data in place, so you don’t have to incur loss of any kind which could be hazardous to your cause.
2. Performance Prioritization
The kind of media used, network connecting applications and storage & access protocols are the three most significant factors that impact cloud performance. Due to absolute lack of standardization, there is no set reference for the end users to look at before they make their decision.
Make sure you analyze all the available performance benchmarks and choose that suits you best. Most providers don’t guarantee it but some have come up with promising initiatives such as guaranteed IOPS (Input /Output per second).
3. Analyzing the provider’s support system
Public cloud storage providers are in a desperate urge to expand their technology portfolios reaching out to various enterprises and organizations and so, something had to give.
Seeing how regularly cloud service providers tie up with third party audits and software platforms, accountability and support credentials need to be clearly mentioned at the premise.
4. Assess data compliance
Since your data can be anywhere on the planet, you should be uncompromising when it comes to compliance requirements. Different countries possess different data privacy regulations where some privacy laws might prohibit users’ information from being stored abroad.
So, without fail, these data residency norms and security regulations need to be agreed upon beforehand.
5. Scalability factors
Moving on to some of the most under-rated features which when overlooked can lead to disastrous repercussions later on. You need to assess if your hosting provider’s setup would seamlessly fit into your infrastructure plans for the future. Will there be room for upgrades? Make sure there is an accommodation for limitless growth.
The dilemma is: What might seem clever hosting to you right now might not be credible enough 2 years down the line. Hence, choose carefully!
6. Money talks
This is the first thing we look at but the key here is, to remember that this doesn’t necessarily have to be a deciding factor. Remember the old maxim that we get what we pay for. So, frantically jumping to the cheapest option might lead to your downfall.
7. Tech Support
What are the emergency measures that will be undertaken when things go south? Will I get 24×7 customer support? And more importantly, will they be knowledgeable enough to fix it and give me remedies? What are the various social media options I could opt for to contact them for emergencies like toll-free phone, e-mails, text messages, Facebook and other social networking sites.
8. Customer Reviews
You might want to do a little self research before you get into it real-time as the decision that follows is going to shape the possible future of your organization. Ask reliable people for recommendations and feedback. Do a Google search or look them up on Facebook if it helps, but dig deep.
Conclusion
Some users are everything but laidback and they might put their backs into finding the perfect cloud hosting provider for them, and there are some who might be naive enough to view this process as an afterthought. PLEASE steer clear of the latter!
Renuka Rana, Editor at QuickBooksHosting Dot Com spends considerable part of her time in writing about technology including cloud hosting, Hosted PBX and QuickBooks hosting. When not writing, she loves to dig deeper into knowing the best and the latest technology in industry.
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