It’s hard to talk architecture these days without a mention of the Cloud finding it’s way into the conversation. Everyone wants to know “is the Cloud right for me?” Unfortunately a lot of people have no idea what “cloud” truly means.
Do some digging on what “cloud” means and you will find a lot of information. You can find articles that show you common myths about the cloud, you can find reports that compare pricing, and you can find definitions for things like PaaS, SaaS, and IaaS. But none of that information by itself is going to help you make a business decision.
As with any project you need to ask questions that help you identify the cost, benefits, and risks. Moving to the cloud requires that same level of research as any other project. Whenever I help customers decide which cloud solution provider is the right choice for them I have a standard set of questions I use:
- How much will the cloud solution cost? (The Karen López (blog | @datachick) equivalent of “what’s your budget?”)
- How fast will the cloud solution be? Will it scale easily?
- How easy will it be to migrate existing apps and data to this cloud provider?
- How reliable will the cloud services be?
- Do you need special tools, training, or staff?
- What are the security or legal risks?
- What features are currently available for this cloud provider?
- Do you need to learn new skills?
- What support is offered by this cloud solution provider?
These questions are meant as a primer and should help lead you to additional questions you will want to ask. I put together this quick chart to help you understand why you may want to ask these questions as well as the answers you want to hear.
For more in-depth details on public cloud storage providers (i.e., IaaS) check out this Gartner report: http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1D9C6ZM&ct=121216&st=sg.
Choosing the right cloud solution provider can be an overwhelming task. Select the right provider and your projects are a success; selecting the wrong choice may set your company infrastructure back years.
When selecting a cloud solution provider it is important to know your business requirements and that the provider chosen will meet those needs. With a variety of cloud services and deployment models available on the market it is very important to partner with a cloud provider that has the right level of experience, too. The questions above are your guide to making the correct choice.
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