Before signing with a cloud provider, make sure the provider is fully committed to understanding your company and the specific objectives you hope to reach with cloud, said Puneet Shivam, head of U.S. And global co head of the outsourcing vertical at Avendus Capital, Inc., a financial services firm based in NY. To do that, listen to what providers promise you, Shivam said. Instead, opt for a provider that may talk to the company advantages you’d gain through their service, like higher client retention or streamlined product delivery. Organizations within a specific vertical market – like financial services, healthcare or retailing – should ensure providers have knowledge of their specific market.
This could mean, in several cases, your organization opt for a smaller, niche provider – even when they are used alongside services from a larger player like Amazon Web Services, Shivam said. After using AWS infrastructure as a service platform for about a year, SumAll moved to Rackspace. It had been Rackspace’s 2013 acquisition of ObjectRocket – a MongoDB database as a service provider – that convinced SumAll to make the switch, said Dane Atkinson, Chief executive officer and co founder of SumAll. AWS, which still hosts a tiny portion of SumAll’s workloads, is more of a commodity provider. Another essential aspect when selecting a cloud provider is to give business leaders – not just IT – a seat at the table, according to Shivam. This ensures your company objectives are communicated clearly, and eventually understood, by the provider. Technology is getting closer to the company, Shivam said.