Blog / Cloud Server for companies: keys for the election

Cloud Server for companies: keys for the election

by SW Team

This is the situation: your company has decided to change server provider in the cloud or must face the jump to the Cloud Server platform for the first time. Once the previous study is done, a huge variety of suppliers from all over the world appear before you, which at first glance seem to offer very similar products and services (Cloud Server, backup, load balancing, scaling, etc.): a perspective overwhelming considering that the future of IT infrastructure will depend on this decision.


Server provider in the cloud: four key aspects


In this article, we briefly present four key aspects that will help you make a decision in a much more conscientious way to ensure the success of choosing a server in the cloud for your company:

1. Assess the criticality of the project

The first step you should take when assessing a provider is to ensure that your benefits, reputation and capacity are in line with the criticality that your project requires. Nowadays an online business can suffer losses valued in thousands of euros just for brief moments of disconnection. When choosing a server in the cloud for your company, you must take into account how acceptable it is that your service suffers a fall or a technical problem and discard those providers that do not measure up. Certainly, a provider for occasional development environments is not the same as a Cloud provider that can securely accommodate production environments that require high availability.

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2. Value the will and technical capacity of your company

The migration to the new server in the cloud will require specific knowledge, time and dedication. Also the maintenance of the server will require constant effort by your company or IT department and, finally, you should not forget the management of incidents that can happen at any time of the day and on any day of the year. You must ask yourself who will be responsible for performing these tasks and if you think it is convenient to delegate them to the provider of your choice.

In this sense you can choose a provider 'Do It Yourself' that will often offer cheaper prices and you know with certainty that your company or IT team can perform all these tasks. However, if you believe that in the future or even from the moment of migration you wish to delegate these tasks to the provider, you should discard those providers on your list that do not offer migration, administration or 24x7 incident management services. The advantages of delegating these tasks are often found not only in saving time and increasing productivity on the part of your IT team, but also in the additional peace of mind it entails and the reliability guarantees they bring to the business.

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3. Assess the growth options provided by the provider

The infrastructure in the cloud that your company requires at the beginning of the project can be very different from the one that it requires in the future. Depending on the IT or business needs of your company, it is possible that along the way there is a requirement to expand the infrastructure, modify it or even the possibility of having to develop a parallel infrastructure that integrates with the existing infrastructure. In fact, it is impossible to predict all these requirements by which thing, when choosing a server in the cloud for your company, you should take into account those providers that offer greater facilities for the growth, modification or expansion of your new Cloud infrastructure.

These "growth facilities" can be very varied and range from a wide variety of products and technologies, through consulting services and advice to guide you when a need arises, to "hands-off" services in which the Own provider implements the changes for you with minimal impact on your day to day.

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4. Rate support options and response times

Finally, our fourth advice when choosing a server in the cloud for your company is to carefully assess the support guarantees and response time that the provider offers you by contract. It is important to check this aspect very well since it determines a large part of the relationship you will have with your provider (how do I communicate with him for my day to day?) And what guarantees will he offer you in case of an incident (what is the time? of response and how long will it take to get my service operational again?).

Depending on the criticality of your project and the communication preferences of your company, you can choose a provider that only responds to your inquiries by email and from Monday to Friday during business hours to a provider who is available for immediate consultations by telephone 24x7. Of course, each option has a price, but in many cases this premium support is already included with a reduced price in the administration and management plans of the provider.

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A good time to assess the relationship that you or your company will have with the supplier of your choice is during the pre-sale stage in which you will establish a commercial relationship and the supplier should be able to:

  1. Understand the needs of your project.
  2. Ask the right questions to gather all the necessary information.
  3. Make a proposal to measure.
  4. Advise you during the whole process and, of course, solve all your doubts.
  5. Make clear the expectations and benefits of the service.

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This close contact before hiring will not only allow you to resolve any doubts you may have about the Cloud provider's service, but also give you a first hand on how the relationship between your company and the provider could be in the future.

The IT infrastructure of your company and possibly the proper functioning of your business depend on this decision. We hope that these four aspects can help you make a decision with more certainty and guarantees of success for the project.

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