Once you have chosen the right cloud vendor and equipped yourself with the right expertise for the cloud, here is a list of practical issues to be remembered to make the cloud journey as smooth as possible.
- Proper negotiation of service level agreement
- Vendor lock-in
- Change in organisational culture
- Compliance and security of data
- Commercial implication of shipping large volumes of data
- Integration of the cloud into the existing system
Service Level Agreements (SLA)
Some cloud solutions providers offer higher service level guarantees in order to differentiate themselves from the competition. SLA has been defined majorly to understand the consequences of the failure of a service and has nothing to do with the actual reliability of the service.
The cloud providers need to guarantee the service that they will offer in case they are hired. The guarantee of up-time and services that are hired are to be noted in the SLA. In case the provider fails to meet the level of availability signed in the SLA, they will need to compensate the customer as signed in the document.
There will be a certain percentage of the fee that the providers will offer during downtime. This SLA will offer an insight into the provider’s level of commitment. The reason SLA is a criterion that one should take into consideration, is that the real up-time will not be known. Testimonials and reviews will give the provider’s real up-time, but till then SLA is a better proposition.
Vendor Lock-in and Legal Compliance
The application programming interface (API) offered by the cloud solution is an important criteria that one should evaluate. This helps one access the infrastructure and performs operations like provisioning and de-provisioning servers.
The API is supported by multiple providers, and vendors will reduce the lock-in and help towards migration whenever needed. Again, the application does not need to be changed majorly in this case. The developer-vendor ecosystem will help enhance the services and capabilities of the cloud solution provider.
Consider the cloud solution provider that offers a developer-vendor ecosystem and has taken into consideration all the legal compliance that will make migration easy and convenient. The API should be supported by majorly all vendors and should comply with all the legal and security requirements as defined by the enterprises. API monitoring and management should be easy with the tools offered by the cloud solution provider.
Network and Security of data
Cloud solutions are based on different layers like application layer, host layer and network layer which make it complex and interconnected in many ways. The solution has to be secure at all levels in order to ensure that the enterprise data stored in the cloud remains protected. Efforts need to be made to maintain an adequate level of application maturity and build on its security levels.
The provider’s application and network-level security needs to be scrutinized. Know if the cloud solution offers application-layer firewalls. Secure a sanity checklist for pre and post deployment and keep reviewing the security development programs at regular intervals to keep the code secure. The application security should be integrated into the system at regular intervals. The architecture and functional design of the cloud should be reviewed from a security perspective.
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