When it comes to the increasingly critical matter of cloud migration, choosing the right professional services company is essential to success. But what are the top characteristics of services provider that can meet the needs of an organization over both the short term and long haul?
If your company is among the countless now about to start or expand on cloud migration, here are three specific questions to ask to help determine whether a service provider will measure up to the challenge.
Is the Services Company Partnered with a Major Cloud Provider?
To partner with a cloud platform provider, companies are required to have a certain amount of expertise through certifications awarded on the basis of knowledge and skill. Indellient, for example, has been an Amazon partner ever since 2017. In October of 2020, the company attained Select Tier status within the program. Customers range from small businesses to the Fortune 500.
You’ll find other big advantages to working with partners, too. Through partnership programs, cloud service platforms help service partners to create and manage solutions built on their products; as well as to market and sell those solutions.
This means that choosing a provider partner can save you money. Why? Because partners have access to the platform’s best VM’s and promotions/deals.
Make sure to avoid Vendor “Lock-In”
If you’re concerned about technological lock-in in your migration project, you are not alone. Unless the proper procedures are in place, lock-in can become an issue if an organization decides at some point to move its assets and operations from one services provider to another. Costs and time incurred can be higher than originally anticipated because of factors like proprietary data formats and APIs.
Does the Service Provider use Well Known Tools?
To avoid technological lock-in, look for a cloud migration services team that uses well-known and popular tools rather than the unique or “Custom”. This will make hand over much easier if that becomes necessary as any other service provider will already understand the tools.
Indellient, for example, uses standard AWS tools like AWS Migration Hub, AWS Application Discovery Service, AWS Database Migration Service, and Amazon Snowball.
Are they Transparent about Processes?
A good service provider will provide proper documentation, frequent knowledge transfer sessions, as well as quarterly business reviews. With all of the information and documentation your team could easily take on your Cloud in house or to a new vendor.
Do they work with Multiple Cloud Vendors?
Lock-in can get exacerbated, of course, if a business opts to switch from one cloud platform to another. Increasingly, though, cloud platforms are embracing multi-cloud interoperability. Amazon’s AWS Cloud Formation and AWS Config cloud management tools now both support third-party resources. Microsoft’s new Azure Arc as well as Google’s new Anthos also indicate acknowledgment of the need for cloud interoperability.
Indellient provides solution development and managed services for all three of these cloud platforms: AWS, Azure, and Google. We can also move your company between any of the three platforms quickly and smoothly.
How well does the services company manage security and governance?
“Today, most security analysis suggests that mainstream cloud is more secure than on-premises IT,” Gartner noted in a recent report. “To date, there have been very few security breaches in the public cloud — most breaches continue to involve on-premises data centers.” Still, experts recognize that computing in the cloud raises specific security and compliance issues. Here are some questions to ask your service provider.
- Who can access your data?
- What legal Compliances do they adhere to? (HIPAA/GDPR/PCI DSS)
- Incident response guidelines in terms of Malware, DDOS Attack, or Data Leak
Are all cloud services providers able to meet security needs, however? “Don’t assume that cloud providers are not secure, but also don’t assume they are,” Gartner advises.
So in addition to finding out about partnerships and project transparency, make sure to ask a company for detailed explanations of its security standards and certifications and its policies around data breaches and data loss.
Custom Cloud Applications
Indellient takes a customer-first approach to help you build a modern cloud strategy on Amazon Web Services, Windows Azure and Google Cloud Platform. Our team can help you build, replatform, migrate and integrate applications, so you can benefit from the scalability, agility, and performance available through cloud technologies.
Indellient is an IT Professional Services Company that specializes in Data Analytics, Cloud Development Application, DevOps Services, and Business Process Management.
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