Customer Service
Ultimately, your choice may come down to a gut feeling about which cloud computing vendor you would prefer to do business with. There are a lot of questions you need to ask. How quickly does a vendor return your calls? How transparent are they in discussing what kind of technology they use or who their providers are and how often they have downtime? Do they answer your questions about the servers they use and the software they run and their disaster recovery plans?
"There are other ways to measure a vendor's merit, as well. Ask for referrals and check up on as many as you can. If you're thinking about moving a highly critical business application to the cloud, ask to visit their data center as it will tell you a lot about their capability. And, ultimately, you want to determine whether the vendor is willing to put their promises in writing in the form of a service level agreement (SLA). If the vendor relies on other software and hardware and infrastructure players to keep their service up and running, make sure all the promises in the underlying SLAs align properly," DiMemmo says.
Hopefully you will never have to assess penalties for the vendor's failure to perform as promised, but it's a measure of the vendor's confidence in their products and services if they are willing to include penalties in the SLA. "You really want to make sure that there is confidence in the service," DiMemmo says. "If the underlying providers are willing to share some level of risk in delivery, it's a good indicator those folks are confident in their infrastructure."
Dig Deeper: Assess Security of Cloud Computing Apps
Recommended Resources:
A Balancing Act: What Cloud Computing Means for Business
White paper examining what businesses have to gain from cloud computing by Deloitte Global Services Ltd.
The 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors
Article by Computer Reseller News lists companies that attack cloud computing with certain panache.
Cloud Computing: What Accountants Need to Know
The Journal of Accountancy looks at could computing from the back office.
Small Business Guide to Cloud Computing
Small Business Trends lays out the groundwork for choosing a reliable cloud computing vendor.
Quest Software Unveils 2011 Predictions for Cloud Computing, Virtualization and Identity Federation
Market Watch lists the predictions for 2011 in the realm of corporate cloud computing.
