The aspects that you must consider before choosing a Cloud Hosting provider

There are some aspects that you must consider before choosing a Cloud Hosting provider. Making the wrong choice can be frustrating and costly. Conversely, choosing the right cloud provider can make your business easier and grow faster.

1. Know what you need

Have a clear vision for what you want to achieve with your cloud. You don't want to dedicate time and money only to find out you can't import or export ISOs (if that's critical to your business).

Are you extending your VPN to the cloud, building a high-volume e-commerce site, etc.? Do you need API functionality, a managed or unmanaged service, Windows or Linux templates, multiple servers, load balancing, scalability, daily backups or SPLA?

Make a checklist and begin your search. Sometimes the information you're looking for is not always found on a cloud provider's website, so don't be shy about picking up the phone or shooting them an email with your query.

2. Evaluation period

Just as you would test drive a car before making a commitment to buy, you should also test drive your cloud provider. See if the cloud provider you're looking at has discounts or free tiers for new customers to help with the evaluation.

3. Support

If you get stuck creating your first server, it would be nice to have someone to call. Double check to see if the cloud providers you're considering offer paid or free support, as this can add some serious dollars to your monthly bill.

4. Read the service level agreement

Are they committed to providing you maximum uptime? If not, how are you compensated?

It should be noted that some responsibility lies with the client in ensuring they architect their servers in a way that ensures maximum uptime. Every cloud provider has minor outages.

If any outage has the potential to cost you big money, be sure to architect your cloud in such a way to ensure you're secure.

5. Multiple zones and the availability to load balance between zones

This is a follow-up on the last point. A great way of ensuring maximum uptime (if this is critical for your business or organisation) is through multiple zones. If one zone or server goes, the load balancer or DNS server redirects the user to the active server.

6. Data transfer speed and cloud server speed

Regarding the speed of your data transfer, this depends on two things:

1. The bandwidth available to the cloud provider.
2. The location of your cloud provider. The further away the data centre is from you or your clients, the slower it will be to retrieve data. Therefore, if your clients are predominantly from one country or location, then it's best to go with a local cloud hosting provider or architect across multiple regions.

Regarding cloud server speeds, cloud hosting providers allow you to scale your server capacity up and down as needed. Just be sure to review the costs carefully and not get too carried away with all the power at your fingertips - a blog doesn't need an extra large instance and of 8GB RAM.

7. Consider data jurisdiction and data compliance

Where your data resides is subject to the rules and regulations of:

a) The country in which the data resides.

b) The country where the cloud hosting company is located.

For example, if a US company owns servers in Australia, the US law applies to the company, despite the servers being in Australia.

Additionally, your industry or company guidelines may specify cloud security best practices for data storage and handling, i.e. onshore only, encryption best practice guidelines, etc.

8. Security

Security isn't just about hackers breaking your systems. The topic includes:

• Network security
• Data centre security
• Best practices
• Virtual server & cloud storage security

9. Scalability

For users wondering what the difference between VPS and cloud is, scalability lies at the heart of it. If you need to create/destroy multiple servers or increase/decrease the server's performance to match demand instantly, you need cloud.

10. Passion for innovation and the ability to change with the times

Think about some of the things you take for granted these days: being able to watch YouTube videos on demand from your PC, smartphone or tablet, being able to download and view maps anywhere, anytime, and the ability to share and work on documents during a meeting with people around the world.

What amazing things will people achieve using the power of the cloud in the future? I don't know, but I'm sure it'll be awesome. To get to that unforeseeable future, it takes drive and determination from groups of bright people.

If innovation in the workplace is to continue, cloud hosting providers need to keep up with the times, push boundaries and help provide the tools to ensure that innovation continues for their clients.