How do you evaluate and compare different cloud platforms and services?

1 Identify your requirements

Before you start exploring different cloud platforms and services, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with cloud computing. What are your business objectives, technical challenges, and budget constraints? What kind of workloads, applications, and data do you need to run, store, and manage in the cloud? What are your security, compliance, and performance requirements? By defining your requirements, you can narrow down your choices and focus on the cloud solutions that meet your specific needs.

2 Compare features and functionality

When shortlisting potential cloud platforms and services, you should compare their features and functionality to determine if they can meet your requirements. Consider the types of cloud models they offer, such as public, private, hybrid, or multi-cloud, as well as the cloud services they provide, such as IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, or FaaS. Additionally, assess the availability, reliability, scalability, compatibility and integration of their cloud services with your existing systems and tools. Furthermore, evaluate their security and compliance protocols such as encryption and authentication. Lastly, review the pricing and billing of their cloud services such as pay-as-you-go or subscription.

3 Test and evaluate performance

Testing and evaluating the performance of different cloud platforms and services in real-world scenarios is an important step. You can measure and monitor speed, latency, throughput, availability, reliability, and scalability using a variety of methods and tools. Benchmarking involves running standardized tests on different cloud solutions to compare their performance based on predefined metrics and criteria. Creating a prototype or sample application on different cloud solutions is known as a Proof of Concept and is used to test their feasibility and suitability for your requirements. Load testing simulates high volumes of traffic or requests on different cloud solutions to test their capacity and resilience under stress. Finally, user testing gathers feedback from end-users or customers on different cloud solutions to test their usability and satisfaction.

4 Review customer support and documentation

The final step to evaluate and compare different cloud platforms and services is to review their customer support and documentation. You should choose a cloud provider that offers reliable, responsive, and helpful support for your cloud computing needs. Additionally, you should select a cloud provider that provides comprehensive, clear, and updated documentation for their cloud solutions. When reviewing customer support and documentation, aspects such as the availability of customer support channels (e.g. phone, email, chat, or ticket system), the quality and timeliness of customer support responses (e.g. resolution time, accuracy, courtesy), the scope and coverage of customer support services (e.g. technical, operational, or strategic support), as well as the format and content of their documentation (e.g. guides, tutorials, FAQs, or best practices) should be taken into consideration.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?