Choosing Your Cloud Vendor

Expanding on the " introduction to cloud computing" article, here are some additional suggestions for choosing  a cloud service model  provider.

In a typical Cloud Computing data centre, an application set will generally be hosted over Virtual Machines running on a large number of Physical Machines.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is a definite factor when considering a move for some enterprise services into the cloud. There are certainly arguments both for and against the merits, especially when considering the impact of risk on an enterprise that choses to transfer risk with the adoption of a cloud service.

However as a customer you should ensure resources are in place to safeguard the maintenance and management of your identity management and authentication systems. Keep in mind that in the dynamic cloud computing environment traditional security practices may not fully apply and when designing your service/s for deployment in the cloud.

As customers you need to be clear that for every anticipated gain from such a deployment you will be giving up something else e.g.change in security metrics and loss of control of resources.

When drafting your Service Level Agreement (SLA) ensure that the provider explains items such as, their facilities to include business continuity plans, backup facilities, rack space, power, cooling, networking, physical security, logical security, (everything transferred to the cloud should be secured to the same level as you would implement at your enterprise to secure your applications in their Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)).

https://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1520155


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