Remember the five main elements to choose the most suitable public cloud service provider

Select the most appropriate cloud computing service provider

Gartner predicts that the market for cloud computing services will exceed 150 billion dollars in 2013. Different cloud services providers are coming in, they have evolved from traditional it vendors, and there are new start-ups, even from online e-commerce companies. They offer different types of service and the quality of service is mixed. Enterprises in the choice of these cloud computing services should be combined with their own needs, from different angles of the investigation.

While cloud computing can bring many benefits to companies, companies still have a lot to worry about when it comes to cloud computing, the relatively new IT service model. Because the private cloud service model is not fundamentally different from the traditional IT service approach, these concerns are focused on the public cloud services.

The transparency of services to cloud computing service providers For example, what functions must be included in the security factors, who can access the data, use what level of encryption, where our data, where our physical machines, service level agreement in the end, the technical support services is 7x24 or 5¡á8. The famous market research firm IDC has done business research on cloud computing concerns in September 2009, as shown in Figure 2.7, the main concern for the adoption of public cloud services.

In order to help enterprises choose the most suitable for their own public cloud service provider, the editor from the following five elements elaborated.

Elements I, categories of services

Cloud Computing's three broad categories of services are different, enterprises in the choice of cloud computing should pay attention to distinguish between their differences. If you need more control over the service, the enterprise should choose the IaaS service. However, more control at the same time on the enterprise IT technical requirements are higher, because IaaS services to the bottom of the hardware platform is managed by the service provider, but its platform on the general needs of customers to manage themselves. If you need to outsource as many IT services as possible, then the enterprise should choose the top tier SaaS service. Of course, if you choose this type of service, the enterprise's control of the service environment is very limited, and not all application requirements have a corresponding SaaS service.

Factor II, billing situation

Providers of commercial cloud computing services are charged according to different circumstances, such as how many users they use, how much computing resources they use, what services they use, and so on. As with all services purchased, businesses need to be able to see the billing of all services, especially if the cloud computing services they use can dynamically expand resources. Most cloud computing service providers provide an application or interface to provide users with the specifics of resource billing. If a service provider is unable to provide similar information, the company may have problems choosing such a supply mulberry. Of course, another issue directly related to billing is the charging of services, enterprises need to do two comparisons. One is that the cost of direct service is compared with the expected service cost in one service cycle, and the other is the horizontal comparison of fees between different cloud services providers.

Elements III, standards compliance and certification issues

The standard compliance of cloud computing services affects customers in several ways. If cloud computing services support standards, then users can access them in a standard way. For example, Microsoft Windows Azure Platform storage Access is based on the standard rest method, so no matter what language users use what platform, can be based on rest to access these stores. On the other hand, the support of the cloud computing platform to the standard allows users to have a choice, and not completely locked in a specific cloud computing services.

Of course, different levels of cloud computing services to the user's degree of lock-in is not the same, in general, PAAs services are more locked than IaaS services, and SaaS services are more locked than PAAs services, but users need at least the ability to migrate or back up data from a cloud services platform.

Cloud computing Service Provider certification is also a very important research indicators, certification is a third party to the service provider a recognition and affirmation. There are some certifications associated with the IT system's transport and peacekeeping security, such as ISO/IEC 27,001:2,500. Some certifications are related to compliance, such as a SAS (Statement on Auditing standards) in the United States, and certification of audit guideline descriptions.

SAS70 Certification is a service provider of internal control and financial-related certification, so for cloud computing service providers This certification is particularly important. SAS70 certification was created by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, which consists of two levels. One is the first type of certification, through the enterprise itself to collect internal information, to the regulatory body to prove all the actions, control objectives, processes in line with the laws and regulations of the regulation. The second type of certification is more stringent, is the first type of certification on the basis of increased service regulators on the enterprise audit opinion. With these two certifications, companies can basically guarantee compliance with corporate concerns about cloud computing security in terms of laws and regulations and risk management.

Factor Iv. Security Issues

Cloud computing magnifies the challenge of it, and some of the service information that was placed inside its own server is now being put into the cloud, and the application in the cloud may be anywhere. How to ensure the security of the user login, this application can move from one point to another point, in the end what people can see what kind of information, see how much of this information is determined by what exactly, all these problems are enterprises in considering the security of cloud computing factors to consider.

As you can see from the previous IDC survey, security is the biggest concern for companies when it comes to cloud computing, but if you're choosing a cloud computing service that pays special attention to the security aspects of your vendor and takes some security best practices, you can improve the security of your business using cloud computing services.

Companies should conduct a comprehensive risk assessment before using cloud computing services, involving data protection, data integrity, data recovery, and compliance. We recommend that companies adopt a risk-management model similar to the financial services industry when assessing cloud computing security. Risk control in cloud computing should be considered in terms of security, privacy, compliance, and sustainability of services.

Companies need to see if cloud services providers have relevant security certifications, related security architectures, processes, and risk-control methods. In addition, according to some national regulation, the enterprise may also need to understand the location of the service provider's physical data center, in order to meet the enterprise's data storage location requirements.

Factor v. Integration of existing systems with enterprises

Enterprises in the construction of information systems should try to avoid the formation of information islands. Whether in the data level, application level or at the interface level, applications and applications should be able to easily integrate, so that data can be easily transferred, end users can also have a good user experience. This requires enterprises in the choice of public cloud services, to consider the target public cloud services and their own enterprise internal system how to integrate. This integration can be achieved in a variety of ways.

For example, data exchange is a relatively basic requirement, the lowest requirement is the use of manual operation of the way. The ideal goal, of course, is to automate a variety of integration approaches. Enterprises can examine the integration capability of cloud computing services from two aspects. One is whether cloud computing services provide a secure transport channel with enterprise data for integrated communications. Microsoft's Windows Azure platform and Amazon's AWS, for example, provide an IPSec-based secure channel between their cloud Platform data center and the enterprise data Center.

The other aspect is to see whether the cloud computing service provider provides an open management interface or management tool that enables companies to integrate cloud computing services into their own data center application management. Microsoft's Windows Azure platform provides the programming interface for rest-based service management (service Management API), and Microsoft has further expanded its System Center based Systems management tools, Enables enterprise IT managers to simultaneously manage their applications deployed within the enterprise and deployed on the Windows Azure platform in an administrative interface.