6 things SMEs should consider in cloud provider

The cloud is without a doubt the best way for a start-up or small business to access all the IT infrastructure and enterprise-grade tools they need, without having to invest heavily upfront. However, the cloud is not a one-size-fits-all proposition, writes Renette Lombard, managing executive: midmarket CSO at BCX.

While South Africa now has a wealth of excellent cloud options available, it is important to ensure that the cloud service providers, specific solutions, and support agreements you choose align 100% with your business’s needs and budget.

Here are six key factors to consider when selecting services for your business:

Costs

Costs can escalate alarmingly, if not carefully planned and managed. It is important to determine what cloud resources you will need and exactly how you will be billed. You’ll also need to consider whether public, private or hybrid cloud are most cost effective for you, and whether it makes sense to move all or some of your data and workloads to the cloud.

Cloud service providers typically offer a range of products, which can be billed by time, gigabytes, executions or instances. Some offer volume discounts, and some offer free tiers. If comparing the options proves daunting, an expert cloud partner can help you analyse your needs and select the right services to meet them.

Governance and compliance

It is important to ensure that the cloud service provider you choose aligns with best practice in terms of data protection and cross border data flows. If data sovereignty is a concern, check that the provider is present in-country, and will retain your data in the country.

Standards and SLAs

If you’re entrusting mission-critical systems and data to a cloud service provider, you will need the assurance that they offer best practice security, standards and SLAs. Consider the provider’s certifications, regional footprint, redundancy and resilience, guaranteed uptime, and levels of support.

With load shedding an ongoing concern in South Africa, the service provider should offer data centres with resilient power and backup.

DR and backup

Service providers’ backup and disaster recovery provisions and processes differ: consider their testing, recovery time objectives, SLAs and exclusions to ensure these meet your business’s specific needs.

Tools and features

Hyperscalers such as Azure and Google are a natural progression path for organisations already using Microsoft and Google tools respectively. However, most of the leading cloud providers also offer tools and features to enable integration and migration of existing business tools into the cloud, as well as ever-growing ecosystems of value-adds.

When selecting a cloud service provider, look at the products on offer, such as developer tools, AI and machine learning, analytics, web and mobile apps, API management, dashboards and security.

Exit provisions

It is also important to consider how you will exit the agreement if you choose to. Consider the level of vendor lock-in and the possible complexities of moving from the service provider, before taking the leap.

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