Selection of a Cloud Computing Provider - Essay Example

Selection of a Cloud Computing Provider Cloud computing has turned out to be an emerging development in Information Technology sector in the recent times. The companies generally make a contract with cloud computing service providers over a specific time period. The article that I have chosen emphasizes on the selection strategies particularly the exit strategies the company has to formulate when a company has to terminate the contract with those cloud computing service providers. Generally companies make contract with those firms by just the reputation that they have or referred by other industry counterparts.

While the contract is at its initial stage of being formulated, none of the parties think seriously of termination of contract if they had to undertake in future. However, at the time of selection of appropriate cloud provider, not only the exit strategy factor is taken into consideration but also some other factors which include nature and amount of workload, commercial viability of the project, legal and regulatory requirements and most importantly, the organization’s own strategic objectives.

The nature of requirements, also have their role to play in selecting the appropriate cloud provider. For instance, the company needs to identify as to whether it has to acquire the service of cloud providers in respect of infrastructure, platform or software based. Public, private and hybrid clouds are generally formed as result of such complex requirements of the companies. So far as the implementation of cloud computing is concerned, it is conceived as the fragmented activity such that single cloud provider cannot do everything for its clients.

As a result the implementation is carried out in such a manner that at the earlier stage those applications are implemented first, which have quick benefits so that continuity can be managed and disruptions can be minimized. Another important attribute that has its own prime importance is the financially stability of the cloud providers as the providers with higher level of financial risk can lead the companies to become more vulnerable to their operations. In case, if a cloud provider defaults, it can cause serious damages to the companies including loss of data, delays in gathering backups etc.

Before making a contract with the cloud providers, it is equally important for the companies making agreement with the cloud providers to ensure that system tools and infrastructure statistics would be visible to company. Those statistics include processors’ utilization, the storage provided and consumed by the system, performance of the network, the number of people who are signed in to the system etc. At the same time, companies can also ask the cloud providers to show the “churn rate” which presents the number of clients lost by the cloud provider in the last year.

The legal requirements are also quite considerable because some of the countries do not allow choosing a cloud provider from other countries. For instance, the countries under European Union only approve certain countries from where a cloud provider can be selected like Canada. The security and quality based issues should also be taken into account such that ISO certified cloud providers are more authentic and reliable as compared to other cloud providers. References Bird, J. (2012, May 22). Suppliers: Check your partner, then commit.

Retrieved June 16, 2012, from FT.com: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/75238766-92c2-11e1-b6e2-00144feab49a.html#axzz1xxeVAcY6