Before settling on a provider of cloud management support for your business it is essential to ask yourself a few key questions. Your answers to these questions will determine the expert you choose.
One of the first questions you must ask yourself is why. Why do you think you need help with your cloud infrastructure in the first place? Is there a specific problem you are looking to solve or do you need ongoing assistance for the long haul?
Cloud management support includes a variety of services such as monitoring, maintaining, and operating cloud-based data, applications, and infrastructure to ensure there are no security breaches, massive system failures that stem from inefficiencies, or compliance issues.
Here are a few key characteristics you should look out for in a cloud management support provider;
1. Required and Relevant Certification
After careful deliberation, discussion, and analysis of multiple factors, you’ve concluded that you require cloud management support. However, what does that mean? What are the problems that cloud management support would solve?
Start by outlining a few certifications based on your goals and what you want to achieve out of bringing a cloud management specialist on board. Do you need assistance with security? Do you simply want to improve efficiency and cut costs?
For instance, if security is a big concern, you can start by ensuring that the provider is familiar with frameworks like GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, the ISO/IEC 27001 Certification (information security management certification), SOC 2 Type II Compliance (security and confidentiality relating to data handling), etc.
Other cloud-specific certifications include, but are not limited to, the AWS Managed Services Provider (MSP) Certification, the Microsoft Azure Expert Managed Services provider (MSP) and Google Cloud Partner Designations. If this or any other certification is a big part of your company’s daily operations, don’t forget to bring it up when interviewing experts.
2. Integration and Scalability
Before you get on board and partner with a cloud provider, make sure you understand their preferred cloud platforms. Have an open discussion on whether the provider is willing to help you move your data over to the cloud and integrate your existing processes to cloud systems.
Don’t shy away from getting your team involved and ask them for an unbiased analysis of the provider’s cloud architecture as well as whether it fits your company’s workload and management style.
While some service providers offer migration services, others don’t, and it is essential for you to map out these issues in advance so you can plan the downtime during the transition if needed.
3. Disaster Recovery Strategies
A solid disaster recovery strategy is one of the most important aspects of a company that provides cloud management support. You must rely on a company with a strong disaster recovery plan that involves regular backups of necessary data both in the cloud and on-premise systems.
Keep Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) in mind! An experienced cloud management support expert will help you set an appropriate RPO and RTO based on your business’ unique needs. It is up to you to decide how much downtime your business can tolerate before it impacts your operations.
Moreover, look for providers that offer automatic failover mechanisms that redirect traffic to backup resources in case of a failure. This ensures your users experience little to no service disruptions.
Pro Tip: Test disaster recovery plans regularly through simulated system failure to measure the effectiveness of your strategy!
Key Benefits of Cloud Management Support
When you rely on expert assistance and management of your cloud integrations, you reap the benefits of their expert knowledge and certifications. With cloud management support you know you’re only paying for what you need. Through continuous monitoring and cost analysis, cloud experts are able to identify areas where you can save by eliminating underutilized resources.
Moreover, they can also assist with maintaining regulatory compliance by helping businesses adhere to laws such as the GDPR or HIPAA, managing audits, and ensuring the overall cloud infrastructure meets specific compliance standards.
Through careful monitoring of your systems’ performance as well as configurations that lead to efficient load balancing and network optimizations, cloud experts can help you side-step bottlenecks and delays. In the event of an issue, cloud management teams can set up failover solutions and redundancy measures so that your business experiences minimal downtime.
Final Thoughts
Cloud management support provides several benefits to businesses, regardless of the niche to which they belong. Yet, that is only when cloud management works well. This depends solely on the company you choose for your needs.
If there’s one thing you should take away from this article it’s this; the cloud management support provider you choose must align with your company’s values. Since a lot of their tasks will require them to work across departments, this alignment is necessary to prevent disagreements in the future!
