Top Attributes of the Best Cloud Provider

 Moving one or more of IT services to the cloud has numerous perks including better support for remote and mobile workers, lower capital costs, infrastructure flexibility, and potentially reduced operating costs. Once implemented properly, cloud solutions will help you change the corporate view of IT as the cost center to a competitive advantage able to affect the top-line revenues positively.
Nevertheless, not every cloud service provider is created equal. As a matter of fact, all providers vary significantly in a lot of attributes including security, reliability, support, and so on. Once you move your IT solutions to a provider that doesn’t meet the minimum standard your organization requires for a certain service quality, you will surely hear about this from your C-level executives and end-users.
To know you have made the right choice, here are the different attributes to consider when assessing a cloud provider:

• Availability

While reliability is known as an indication of how frequently a service goes out, availability is all about the recovery time when the service goes down. You might want to deal with a cloud provider that has the shortest and fewest outages.

• Reliability

Services that are business-critical are just that crucial. Businesses can’t afford to have their IT solutions go down for the reason that an outage may impact the business significantly. Missed calls, emails or delayed quotes, and unshared documents may all affect the top-line revenues and bottom-line costs. Reliability is about reducing the service outage’s probability. Search for the service providers that have a background of minimal cloud outages.

• Security

A potential disadvantage of moving IT solutions to an external cloud is low quality security. If the cloud provider doesn’t have the right and important security safeguards in place, the security may be compromised. Search for cloud providers that offer multi-factor authentication and full encryption for content. Having a centralize security policies to move local or remote devices is also essential.

• Scalability

A big advantage of cloud services is their ability in scaling whatever size you require and to be available anytime you require the service. Cloud providers have to be deployed in enough data centers across the globe to support the connection of the users from anywhere your company does business. Search for a cloud provider that will meet your company’s needs.

• QoS or Quality of Service

Just delivering a cloud service isn’t good enough for majority of businesses, particularly when it’s a real-time aspect like web meetings or video/voice calls. The key to quality of service is finding a cloud provider that manage and control as much of the solution as possible like the service technology, networking equipment, and bandwidth connectivity. The more the cloud provider can control and manage, the better the service quality will be.

• Support

It’s a key are that’s frequently overlooked when assessing cloud providers, yet it remains a crucial aspect of any service. The ability in contacting real time support through an IM or a call anytime of the day is important for the companies conducting business across the globe.

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