Choosing the Right Cloud Provider

Choosing the Right Cloud Provider

I recently hosted Trusted Tech Talks’ part two of “Clash of Clouds” with Joe Hodkinson and Jamie Shields, with whom I discussed how Cloud giants AWS and Azure addressed cloud monitoring, cloud security, and CI/CD tooling, as well as a look at Kubernetes. What became apparent was that choosing the right cloud provider is largely preferential and depends on the business. To compliment the webinar discussions, which you can watch here, I researched the most important considerations for businesses who are deciding which Cloud vendor is the best for them.

The key points to consider include:

· Security capabilities: consider what security functions and tools are available to you, how easy are they to use, and what external support you have access to. For this you need to balance the security capabilities of the cloud providers, and your own security capability in terms of your in-house security professionals, resources, and skill levels.

· Price: naturally, this is an important point for most companies. Depending on your size and budget, this may determine which cloud providers you are able to engage with. It’s important to measure value and see what service level you receive for what cost.

· Compliance: choose a cloud platform that will help you meet compliance standards for your industry and organisation. Businesses within certain sectors will have to comply with more rules than others.

· Architecture: consider how complimentary the cloud provider will be with your current workflow. For example, if you’re already a heavy user of Microsoft products, it may be easier and cheaper to integrate Microsoft Azure.

· Service Level Agreement: research what is included in the package and what you have to pay extra for. It’s important to know what support is available to you and what the limits of the agreement are. Some businesses (e.g. smaller businesses) will need a higher level of external support, whilst larger businesses might need a wider range of tools.

· Manageability: assess how easy is the platform to manage for your current cloud team size and skill level. You need to determine how extensive the tooling should be, and also how complex/simple the manageability needs to be.

· Access to tech support: regardless of the platform, problems arise from time to time, and it is important to know you will be able to get in touch with someone to get issues resolved quickly to minimise disruption to the business.

This is just a brief overview of considerations that businesses need to acknowledge when choosing the right cloud provider for them. For more insights into what tools Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) provide for monitoring, security, CI/CD pipelining, and more, request the free whitepaper “Cloud Monitoring, Security, and CI/CD Tooling” today, or watch the full replay of my recent Trusted Tech Talks “Clash of Clouds” now.

Alternatively, to discuss building, scaling, or future-proofing your DevOps and Cloud team, please drop me a message to set up a call.