12 Questions to ask yourself before choosing a Cloud Service Provider

Traditionally, launching new business services through an IT implementation lead to significant upfront costs. And when you are unclear about the usage volume, your business needs a new technology model that is suited to the need of quick development, delivery & launch and a primary focus on usage based spending. With a pay as you grow pricing model, costs are only incurred based on actual usage such as CPU cycles, memory, users, etc.

Thus Cloud Computing strategy provides these instant benefits:

1. Rapid road to market.

2. Lower upfront costs.

3. Predictable pricing.

Once you decide on using Cloud Computing because of the monetary benefits, it’s time to choose the best service provider which can help you implement you business requirements. 

You should have the following points in your checklist to decide on a service provider:

1. How do they handle data security and privacy?

2. Do they maintain a SLA for every customer?

3. Do they have options of interoperability or data migration?

4. Where is their data center located?

5. What kind of SUPPORT services do they provide?

6. Do they have a disaster recovery plan in place?

7. Do they have options of giving an iterative prototype for your application at each stage?

8. Is there an Agile Architecture in place for the application development cycle?

9. How often do they monitor and manage applications?

10. Do they address scalability?

11. What kind of User Experience are they providing and do they have an option for custom Branding?

12. Who owns the IP of the application?

Answers to these questions will help you find the right Cloud Computing service provider and architecture solutions that address your goals and challenges, in addition to your functional requirements, system integration needs, and technology stack preferences.