With all the benefits of cloud computing, it has become much easier to justify the decision to migrate to the cloud. But what do you do now that you’ve decided to make the move? The answer is simple: hire a reputable cloud provider.
Hiring a cloud provider, i.e. a managed service provider, allows you to enjoy all the benefits of the cloud while removing the burden of maintenance and repair. Working with a provider affords you with the high performance IT infrastructure you need and want. It becomes their sole responsibility to free up your time and manpower so that you can focus entirely on effectively running and expanding your business. No more IT stress holding your business growth back.
With that said, there are several things to consider when choosing a cloud services provider.
Before you begin your search, you need to compile a list of questions to ask each cloud provider in order to gain a clearer understanding of how they operate so that your decision will be a highly educated one.
Of course, price and storage capacity are important concerns, but perhaps the most critical question is security: How safe is my data in the hands of these cloud providers?
To find this answer you will need to ask the providers these five questions:
- Does your organization have formal information security policies? Acceptable use, data classification, incident response, etc. This is essentially a plan outlining what their critical assets are and how they must be protected. Explains how their staff is responsible for protecting information resources.
- Do you require any third party services or agreements? This is another organization engaged by their company to provide services for and in the name of the organisation to their clients. Ex: Windows Exchange, Oracle, SQL, etc. licensing and agreements may need to be updated if you migrate to the cloud.
- What are your change control processes? This is a systematic approach to manage all changes made to a product or system to ensure that no unnecessary changes are made, that all changes are documented, that services are not unnecessarily disrupted and that resources are used efficiently. With a systematic approach, it provides consistency and manages expectations of your data.
- Who has physical access to your data center & equipment? This is necessary to ensure that the provider has controls in place to avoid sending, copying, e-mailing, etc., of your data.
- How do you separate my data from other customers? This is important to know because you will have no idea if you’re information is copied so you really need to trust your cloud provider.
Moving to the cloud is a huge decision for your company. Make sure that you are informed on the policies of the cloud provider you choose. If you are already on the cloud then you need to make sure that your current cloud provider can adequately answer all of these questions. If they can’t, then your data could be at risk.
Such a huge and business altering decision requires research and diligence. While we hope that you choose Neovera as your cloud provider, our main goal is to ensure that you choose a provider that will keep your data safe and that your business needs are met. We want you to take these questions that we have given to you and use them to decide for yourself which provider is the best for you.