Three Must Haves in a Cloud Provider
Cloud computing has proven itself to be a mainstay in modern business. Many small and midsized businesses are considering moving to the cloud for the first time. If your company is among those, it's very important that you take the time to determine exactly what you're looking for in a cloud services provider before you decide to make a move. Like so many things in the world of IT, your success in the cloud depends heavily on the vendor you choose to support you. Use these tips to make an educated decision regarding your cloud provider.
1. The Ability to Provide a Personalized Touch
People who are new to picking a cloud service provider might gravitate toward big-name companies, due to their perceived track record of success and ample resources. While these characteristics might be essential for some companies, it’s important to realize that many larger providers offer only one-size-fits-all “big box” cloud solutions. As a small or midsized company with unique business requirements, you need a provider that can accommodate these needs and answer frequent questions.
Working with a cloud solutions provider that can give you more tailored services—like the ones offered by Aventis Systems—can help you make sure you’re getting a cloud environment that meets the exact needs of your company. When choosing a cloud service provider, make sure to communicate your needs up front to ensure they have the ability to support your current business and future growth requirements. Take the time to find a provider that can offer a happy medium between resources and personalization.
2. High Availability and Disaster Recovery Features
Your cloud environment will not provide much value unless your data is available 24/7. In fact, one of the main benefits of moving to the cloud is the ability to ensure high availability and disaster recovery for your business-critical data and workloads. If your cloud service provider can’t deliver on those benefits, you should consider searching for a new vendor.
Look for a cloud services provider that can offer guaranteed uptime and high availability and failover technology. This supports anytime, anywhere access to critical business data, because your data doesn’t exist in any one physical space. In the event of a disaster that damages one data center, there will still be many other data centers that are up and running. You can’t prevent natural disasters from happening, but picking the right cloud provider is a great way to minimize downtime and protect your business data.
3. A Multi-Tenant Cloud Environment
All cloud service providers host data from multiple organizations, but at the end of the day, the great ones should be able to make you feel like you're operating in an environment that is completely your own. It should go without saying that you'll want to work with a cloud provider that does not allow their other users to access your data and resources. However, a true multi-tenant cloud environment can offer much more than that basic capability.
With user roles and rights access management, you can make sure that only the right people can access the restricted information at a given time. With the right cloud provider, you can build up separation of duties the exact way your company sees fit. Your cloud environment should be just that: yours.
If you have any more questions about how to choose the cloud service provider that's right for your organization, Aventis Systems can help. Contact us today to review your options.
