“You never want your customers to be trapped,” Jeff Bezos said to his audience at Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting in Seattle this year, while referring to Amazon Web Services’ success. With the explosive growth in cloud computing providers, consumers are enjoying a growing landscape of competitive offerings that can enable them to choose the best solutions for their businesses, freeing them from the shackles of physical network management.

With Microsoft and Google hot on the heels of Amazon Web Services, you have the opportunity to forge your company’s cloud strategy with many options to choose from. Bezos got it right when he said, “you want your customers to stay with you because it’s the best service.”

While the titans battle it out for a piece of what the IDC forecasts to be $203.4 billion in public cloud spending by 2020, you, the consumer, have the benefit of excellent options.

Cloud Computing Services Defined

Cloud computing services are available “pay-as-you-go” making them scalable and affordable as businesses pay only for the service which they need, when they need them. While the list is growing rapidly, the fundamental cloud computing services on offer are:

Software as a Service (SaaS) is the average consumer’s introduction to cloud services. Likely, on a daily basis we use applications like Microsoft Office 365, Google Docs, or Salesforce. These applications run on a cloud infrastructure and are accessible through user interfaces such as internet browsers. Patches and upgrades are automatic and there is no need for installation.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is used for developers to create application that can then be deployed onto the cloud infrastructure. Developers can test and run code without having to purchase a platform or coding language. Examples include Amazon Web Services Elastic Beanstalk, Google App Engine, and Force.com.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a combination of storage, processing, networking, and other core computing services provided for use by system administrators. This combination creates a virtual environment in which applications and operating systems can be deployed by developers, for use by end-users.

As opposed to having physical machines and servers this allows for businesses to use operational expenditure to pay for the necessary capacity of the virtual machinery required. Examples include such as Amazon Web Service’s EC2 and Syspro Hosting.

A quick internet search will reveal that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the leader in the cloud computing race. In the IaaS race Forrester predicts that along with Google, AWS and Microsoft Azure will earn 76% of all cloud revenue in 2018, which will grow to 80% by 2020.

According to the IDC, around 60% of public cloud spending by 2020 will go to Software as a Service (SaaS), ensuring that it remains the dominant cloud computing service. However, the growth rates of IaaS and PaaS are forecasted to be much faster than that of SaaS at 30.1% and 32.2% 5-year CAGRs respectively.

How to Choose

There are a number of service providers to choose from, offering different packages at different pricing structures. Here are some factors to take into consideration when choosing one:

• Company profile: The ideal service provider should be reliable and have a good track record. It should be financially stable, trustworthy and credible. It should be willing to work on gaining a solid understanding of both the business and technical side of your cloud requirements and have the current technologies to support these as well as plans to innovate and grow in this rapidly changing industry.

• Architecture and resources: Consider whether the service provider has the resources to host, manage, and upgrade your cloud solution. It should be backing up and protecting your data. You should also consider how the architecture of the service provider’s cloud hosting offering would integrate with what exists in your organization and with 3^rd party apps.

• Security: Look for a service provider with robust security infrastructure such as identity management, access control and authentication processes as well as security policies. It is also important that you are aware of the shared responsibility that you have with your cloud service provider and understand which security aspects each of you are accountable for.

• Service Level Agreement (SLA): The service provider should provide you with an SLA outlining the basic level of service that they will perform, with consequences if these services are not met. You should thoroughly understand and feel comfortable with the SLA before agreeing to it. The SLA needs to cover aspects like support, implementation time, response times, and resources available to you.

• Compliance: Choose a service provider that will make sure that your migration into the cloud complies with the requirements of your organization and your industry as a whole, for example, through a third party auditor.

• Cost structure and billing: The cost structure of each service provider may differ. Some bill hourly while others bill by the minute. The minimum block of time that can be purchased varies from one provider to the next. It would be very beneficial to go for a provider which automates billing and account management to avoid unexpected costs.

Needs Analysis

It is essential that you have a thorough understanding of your business and your technical and operational requirements before partnering with a cloud service provider. In this way you will be able to ask the right questions, making informed comparisons against your requirements rather than trying to assess each service provider against each other. You have a landscape of outstanding providers from which to choose so go out there and embrace the cloud.

This article was brought to you by Argus

Argus delivers ERP Software-As-A-Service so that your mission critical applications achieve maximum uptime and your IT department can be streamlined for innovation, not maintenance. Argus is a certified Amazon Web Services Partner for hosting ERP and CRM systems globally.

Are you ready to start leveraging the power of the cloud in your own business? We’re here to help you. Call us to the number 678-383-4147 or send us an email to sales@arguscloud.net for more info.

About the author

Lusanda Mlilo is an Edgeware ERP and CRM financial accounting consultant for the Sage Financials and Salesforce solutions. She is a technical writer on the topics of Amazon Web Services, Salesforce, and Sage Financials.