Here at ASG, we still have a number of clients and prospects who ask us about cloud computing solutions. Is it right for them? How can they take advantage of it? We have a list of questions we ask them to determine if the cloud or the cloud provider they’re considering is a good fit for them, and we thought we’d share those questions with you. So, behold! Thirty questions to ask yourself or your cloud provider before you turn to cloud computing.
- What happens when the cloud goes offline?
- How will I get notified if the cloud does go offline?
- Are your services restarted automatically or is it a manual process?
- If I want to terminate a contract before the term ends, what kinds of ‘lock-in’ or ‘still must pay’ clauses exist, and are they negotiable?
- Do contracts have to be terminated ‘for cause’ and if so how easy is it for the customer to prove a ‘cause’?
- What is the cost to customize my apps once they’re in the cloud?
- How is QoS provided to our business?
- Do you provide load balancing or availability guarantees?
- How much does it cost to import my data? How much will it cost to export my data?
- How must does it cost to back up my data once it’s in the cloud?
- What are my expecting RPO and RTO from your cloud provider?
- What are your annual revenues (might be tough to get an answer if private but ask anyway)? How long have you been in business? How many customers do you have?
- Is your new cloud provider providing you with SLAs that are currently better than what you have today?
- How will you transfer your software licenses you currently own?
- Will your apps be clustered in the cloud?
- How will you manage your apps for performance and/or outages?
- Will your cloud provider use an underlying IaaS for their own infrastructure? Or will they build their own infrastructure?
- What is the SLA? What happens if you don’t meet it?
- Do you have a disaster recovery plan? If so, can you send me a copy?
- Can you provide documentation of your uptime for this year and last year?
- How do you communicate problems, outages, and fixes to your customers?
- How are backups implemented and how long is my data kept?
- Who has access to my data and/or the hardware on which it is running?
- How is redundancy implemented within your environment?
- Do you have spare disk drives, servers, power supplies, internet circuits?
- Do I have full ownership of my data?
- Do you provide a standard annual termination for convenience?
- Do you allow for annual usage-level alignment (up or down) based on my business needs?
- Can I apply monthly ―rollover usage to address seasonal peaks?
- Do you provide long-term price protection?
In terms of streamlining IT operations, cloud computing solutions can provide huge opportunities for companies, but it’s by no means an IT catch-all. Do your homework and ask as many questions as you can to help determine if the cloud is right for you.
