Data is an asset for any business, whether big, small, or medium. Businesses would do anything to store their data. It is also expensive and vulnerable to maintain by keeping it onsite. Hence, all companies are moving towards cloud storage solutions for obvious reasons such as data security and cost-effectiveness.
Cloud hosting is a flexible hosting solution where a business’s computing and storage resources are outsourced to a service provider that offers its infrastructure services in a utility model. Many data centre solutions providers also support Cloud hosting in Australia.
You need to introspect with a few questions as below to validate the necessity of Hybrid Cloud hosting for your business.
- Is it essential to have fast, reliable access to data for your business?
- Are you bothered by the interruption due to various factors?
- Do you have many consumers travelling or home-based users who share files/customers?
There are a few factors to be considered before opting for Hybrid Cloud hosting for your business.
1. Understand your workload.
Before finalizing your talks with a hybrid cloud provider, you need to understand the workloads you want to pull into the hybrid environment and where you will locate them.
You should also be able to vaguely foresee the growth of your business and the extension of services from the service provider for your extended business. Your cloud environment requirement may rise as your company grows; you should be able to arrive at a solution that can integrate well with other providers’ platforms if you need to allocate different hybrid cloud contracts in a multi-cloud environment.
2. Research pricing with various vendors.
Not every business can afford cloud services. You should be mindful of your budget and plan to opt for it. You should know initial costs, closing costs, and extension costs if the demand is higher. A thorough understanding of the cost benefits for your company and important factors such as load balancing and I/O requirements should be weighed. You should know the hidden costs. Various service providers offer flexibility if chosen for a longer duration, which can be validated. The more RAM and CPU allocated to it, the higher the cost will be.
3. Guaranteed security, identity, and authorizations.
With the rise of cybercrime rates, it is your foremost responsibility to enquire with your service provider about the security aspects. Hybrid workloads involve security controllers such as tokens. They protect vulnerable information in cloud data centres by directing to records kept on customer premises. You must ensure hybrid cloud providers can help you implement these security measures. You should also enquire about policies for data back-up and disaster recovery, physical security controls, including the process for natural disasters.
4. Customer Support Services
The service provider’s work doesn’t end with an agreement signature. There must be assured support throughout. You need to understand the turnaround time when an issue is raised. Allocation of dedicated resources at the site of online support. Duration of support availability, whether 24/7, weekend support, and so on.
5. Easy Migration Services
Migration can be tricky, especially when working with more extensive data. The provider must ensure that doing this is simpler and more accessible. The provider should provide appliances that help map data between your on-premises infrastructure and its own or give a consulting service to walk you through the process.
Apart from the above, go to the service provider’s website, find their clients, testimonials and reviews, and the kind of data centre solutions they offer and then decide.
You will find many service provider options for Cloud hosting in Australia. Before getting into any agreement, have a strategy and understanding of what will be achieved with this service and whether it serves the purpose of your business within the budget.
