Tech Connect - Cloud Computing 2010

9 Points To Consider
Before making a Choice

ONCE YOU HAVE DECIDED THAT CLOUD COMPUTING IS APPROPRIATE FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION, YOU
NEED TO CHOOSE A VENDOR. THERE ARE NINE THINGS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER BEFORE RELYING ON
ANY FIRM FOR SERVICES:
VISION:
Does the vendor have a vision of where they are going with cloud computing? Can they state that
vision clearly and does that vision positively impact decisions they make to benefit you (or not,
as the case may be)?

COMMITMENT:

Has the company embraced cloud services at a fundamental level?

CHOICE:
Do you have options for implementing solutions: cloud-based or on-premises models, vendor-
hosted or partner-hosted models?

PLATFORM:
Do they provide a development platform that is open and provides scale and ease of
implementation using a broad array of technologies, tools and languages? Basically, how
interoperable is it?

ROADMAP:
Do they have a technology roadmap for the cloud? Do they let you know what it is? Does the
roadmap embody their cloud vision?

SCALE AND EFFICIENCY:
Can the vendor invest and deliver economies of scale and skill in cloud services so that you gain
the benefits by participating in their services? Does the vendor have a track record of delivering
Internet-scale services reliably and securely?

SECURIT Y:
Does the company provide geo-redundancy to ensure data is always recoverable and to ensure
hot backup in case of disaster? Which security certifications and regulations do they comply
with and what is the compliance philosophy guiding them forward?

INVESTMENT (AND BUSINESS MODEL):

What is the focus of the vendor’s R&D investment? (Hint: What are its core businesses?)

CUSTOMER SUCCESS:
Have customers experienced success in adopting and using the company’s cloud services? Are
the references touted by the vendor real-world, large-scale adoptions by customers making a
decision to replace existing infrastructure for the cloud service or are they pilots? What are the
vendor’s criteria for publicly referencing a customer?

access, location independent resource
pooling, rapid elasticity, and pay per
use. One key concept here is that cloud
computing leads to a world in which an
organization can focus on managing
services rather than infrastructure. With
on-premises solutions, you had to choose
between building and paying for excess
capacity to accommodate demand spikes
provide those capabilities.

or paying for the dissatisfaction that arises when you build capacity for normal operations and customers can not access systems during peak demand.

With cloud computing, you can scale up
and down with demand, getting the “right
capacity at the right time” using three
delivery mechanisms:
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS):
Essentially vendors provide a data center
as a service, where customers can buy
server instances.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): Development tools and a computing environment that allows customers and independent software vendors to build applications that consume computing, storage, and other services in the cloud rather than relying on on-premise servers to