5 Criteria for Selecting Best AWS Cloud Service Provider for your Business

How do you think a cloud service provider can do wonders in your business practices? Well, if you haven’t chosen one, revise your thoughts on this! Even if your business runs at full profits, there can be a point where you must confront various challenges that involve major drawbacks in most cases.  

With well-advanced cloud service providers, it is possible to attain better business outcomes. Selecting the accurate cloud services provider can be really hectic due to several reasons. Everything depends on the organizational requirements, and an in-depth evaluation of the cloud service’s features, cost, security, and reputation. 

This article provides you with 5 core criteria to choose the best cloud service providers that suit your business needs. Azure cloud service providers, AWS managed service providers, and Google cloud providers are top in the industry serving millions of clients every year.  

Let’s check what’s right for you! 

5 Core Criteria for Selecting Best Cloud Service Provider for your Business

As said, choosing what your company or organization needs is the most essential way to decide on your cloud service provider. We provide you with some keen areas to focus on while evaluating cloud service providers.

  1. Certifications & Rules
  • Managed cloud providers including Azure cloud services, AWS cloud services, Google cloud services are partnered with several clients adhering to recognized standards and quality frameworks to demonstrate compliance with industry best practices and standards.
  • Standards may not determine the cloud managed provider you choose but give you an idea to shortlist potential cloud services.
  • The industry has multiple standards and certifications. We advise you to pay attention to structured processes, data management that is effective, good knowledge management, and visibility of service status. 
  1. Service Roadmap & Technologies
  • A Very essential aspect to have a clear idea of the roadmap of your intended cloud service provider’s service development. 
  • You must consider the following:
  1. Is the service roadmap a perfect fit for your company’s long-time requirements?
  2. Is the service provider planning to grow over time and continue to innovate its services?
  3. Are they committed to specific technologies, or do they upgrade over time?
  4. How is their interoperability supported?
  • Confirm if they work on the service roadmap, and accomplish their tasks including frequent data backup, smooth migration, secured data center, and up-gradation as per industry updates.
  • Please ensure that the preferred technologies meet and support your cloud objectives. Things to consider:
  1. Check cloud services, standards, and architectures to suit your management and workload preferences. Also, evaluate the necessity of customization and the level of re-coding that you may need to make your workloads fit as per the cloud platform.
  2. Many service providers offer assistance and comprehensive migration services as early as during the planning and evaluation phase. You need to keep a close eye on such areas too.
  3. Disaster Recovery, Data Security & Governance

Data Security:

  • Ensure that your intended cloud service providers have access to the following:
  • System and Data security
  • Security governance processes
  • Maturity of security operations

Information Security:

  • Check for physical security controls accessible to co-related hardware.
  • Check if environmental safeguards are implemented in the data centers to protect data and equipment from disruptive events.
  • Customer data integrity should be in place and should be followed as per operational procedures and policies.
  • Hardware component or application service changes should be authorized, and the authorized individual should make the change. 
  • To maintain various cloud service types at distinct levels, comprehensive security infrastructure is a necessity.

Disaster Recovery:

  • Integrity checks
  • Data restoration
  • Data backup
  • Data scheduling
  • Data sources
  • Criticality of data
  • Escalation processes
  • Responsibilities
  • Roles
  1. SLAs & Contracts
  • If you find your industry standards lacking, then it can be due to complicated cloud agreements, and contracts. Some cloud managed service providers use complicated words that are completely irrelevant, and unnecessary.
  • So, consider these key factors to keep yourself away from risks:
  1. Service Delivery
  2. Business Delivery
  3. Data Delivery
  4. Legal Delivery
  • In SLAs check for the following key factors:
  1. Caveats and Exclusions
  2. Penalties/incentives and Remediation policies related to service level objectives
  3. Service level objectives

5. Reliability & Performance

  • Check for the cloud service provider’s performance against their SLAs over the last 6-12 months.
  • Evaluate that the monitoring and reporting tools available are sufficient and that they can be implemented into your overall management and reporting systems.
  • Check that the provider you choose has a documented and proven process for handling planned and unplanned downtime.
  • Cloud Providers must have procedures and plans in place that detail how they intend to communicate with users during interruptions, including timeliness, prioritizing, and severity- level assessment of issues.
  • When you find service issues arise, you must be aware of the cloud provider’s solutions and responsibility limitations.          

Conclusion

Choosing the best AWS cloud service providers for cloud services and processes is never easy. But, having one can save your business from many complex issues including backup & recovery. Having cost-optimized cloud service provider can actually develop your business with futuristic opportunities. Think of it! Choose your best Cloud service provider!