Cloud Hosting

The popularity of cloud providers for small businesses has immensely increased over the last couple of years. However, the lack of a standard methodology for evaluating cloud service providers (CSPs) and the fact that CSPs are unique can make choosing the correct one for your small business quite tricky.

We will see more consumer-friendly cloud providers for small businesses in the coming years. However, theres still a risk you might come across a flop in your search for the perfect cloud provider and enhanced office automation.

With that said, here are some great qualities you should look for. Theyll help you spot a great cloud provider for small business owners.

When you outsource a cloud provider, you will essentially rely on their servers in their data center.

Its crucial to ensure your providers data center has physical and environmental controls that monitor and alert security traps, redundancies, and staffing. That helps to keep the environment operational and secure.

When it comes to cloud security, you want to know exactly what your security goals are, what measures each provider offers, and the kind of mechanisms they use to keep your data and applications safe.

Security has proven to be a key priority in cloud computing. However, its crucial to ask specific and extensive questions about your particular use cases, industry, and legal needs, among other issues you might have.

It may all seem a bit overwhelming. However, you must understand this is an essential aspect of operating in the cloud.

Technology is only as good as the people who create it.

Therefore, as you choose a cloud provider, you must ensure that the company behind your cloud is deserving of your trust. Check through their client list to see whether the company is well-known. Ask if theyve worked with organizations similar to yours before.

If there havent been any significant security incidents, we can say they might be a trustworthy lot in general.

On top of that, you should consider the support the team will offer you. If you need help quickly, will they be able to offer it? Some cloud providers only offer support through a phone call center or chat service. That may or may not be acceptable to you.

Therefore, its crucial to find a cloud provider who caters to your needs. With that said, before choosing a cloud service, you must inquire about the level of support and type of support they will provide.

Complete disaster recovery capabilities are critical.

Backups are essential, but they arent enough on their own. In the case of internet, power, or hardware problems, your cloud should have automatic failovers.

Your data should be live-replicated to a backup site. That way, your environment is protected even if your original data center is destroyed.

See how the provider reacts when you ask them the what if question. That way, you can tell if their cloud services are reliable or not.

The cloud provider should document their malware protection, permissions, patching policies and procedures, incident reporting, and response policy.

In addition to that, the cloud provider should share the documentation with you.

When it comes to technology, contentment and laxity are very dangerous things. Hackers are advancing their methods every day, and so should your cloud provider. Your cloud provider must have a systematic forward movement.

The roadmap could involve migrating to a much better data center, implementing two-factor authentication, data loss prevention, or even access-based enumeration.

When choosing a great cloud provider for your small business, you must consider how the architecture of the selected cloud provider can be seamlessly integrated into your business workflow today and in the future.

On top of that, when making your decision, you should consider the available cloud storage designs.

The three major suppliers have similar designs and offer many types of storage to meet diverse needs when it comes to storage architecture. However, you must keep in mind that they all have different forms of archive storage. So it helps to know the variations between each cloud provider.

Each service provides options for regularly storing and accessing data vs. infrequently retrieving data (hot and cool storage). While cool storage is typically less expensive, it comes with a wide range of limitations.

There you have it, the minimum requirements when selecting a cloud provider. A cloud provider who offers anything short of this wont be able to satisfy your needs.

All the same, as you choose your cloud provider, make sure you ask all the tough questions. Trust your gut. Also, keep in mind that a great cloud provider for small business owners should be able to customize its services to fit their business needs.

Follow this link:
5 Qualities of a Great Cloud Provider for Small Business - The Tech Report