The cloud. No doubt your businesses is astute to the cloud and likely utilizes it for financial software, email applications, or components of your IT infrastructure. Cloud options available for commerce include public, private and the latest, hybrid. These options may leverage infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), back up as a service (BaaS), storage as a service (STaas) or most commonly software as a service (SaaS). With this array of possibilities, and the physical locations often a mystery, it’s not hard to envision where the term “cloud” originated.
Choosing the right cloud solution for your business is critical. Cost and performance are always factors that must be considered when making a business decision. Involta assumes that your organization conducts due diligence when researching cloud solutions like any other purchasing decision. The technical team at Involta also suggests that your organization consider the following when determining which cloud provider is suitable:
Track record
- How long has the business been in operation? Who are their references?
- Who will have access to your infrastructure? What are their credentials?
If your company is going to put all of your critical information and applications in the cloud, you want to be sure you know who is managing it.
Location
- Where exactly will your data be housed? Is it across the country? The world?
- Geographic proximity to natural disasters. Hurricanes, typhoons, and tornadoes. What precautions have been taken to mitigate risks and protect your data?
- What is the condition of the physical location? What security and operational policies and procedures does the company follow?
It is absolutely critical to understand if your organization is subject to the demands of SSAE 16, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) or Gramm-Leech-Bliley Act.
Reliability
- What operational infrastructure is in place to ensure uptime?
- What service level agreements exist to protect you from an outage?
If you have an “event” and need your questions answered immediately, you need to know who will be on the other end of the line, what responsibility they have and how quickly it will be resolved.
If your organization is subject to regulatory guidelines or compliance audits, it is worth probing into these considerations deeper to understand the facts. For additional insight on cloud solutions, contact our Team of IT Professionals for assistance with your organization in the analysis and selection of the appropriate cloud platform to meet the needs of your business.
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