Reasons to Change Cloud Service Providers

Transcription

1 5 Top Reasons to Change Cloud Service Providers Velocity Technology Solutions / July 2015 This guide will: Outline key indicators that your business is ready to switch cloud providers Provide you with a list of key questions to ask each service provider you consider Summarize what is included in Velocity s Universal Cloud Services

2 More Questions and New Options As cloud environments mature and new platforms emerge, IT leaders are rethinking their cloud provider partnerships. Reasons to Consider Changing Cloud Providers 1 Vendor is not changing with the growing needs of the company If you moved to the cloud years ago, you chose a provider that met business needs at the time. Since then, your growth and expansion may have outpaced what the provider can handle in terms of performance and security. With experience running applications in the cloud, businesses are now asking smarter questions and have a better understanding of the relationship between strategic objectives and cloud delivery options. An expert in technology analysis says as cloud services become easier to acquire businesses are quick to switch cloud providers, both from public to public and public to private Vendor is not proactive in monitoring the cloud environment The growing complexity of SaaS applications and integrations requires cloud providers be proactive in analyzing and managing your IT environment. If your provider is stepping up only after a problem has occurred, consider looking for a hosting partner that guarantees proactive cloud management and offers best practice solutions. The business has experienced service outages If you have experienced service outages it may be time to take a closer look at the reliability of your vendor. Investigate other providers and how they maximize service availability and performance while minimizing the impact of service failures to critical business operations. 4 Insufficient disaster recovery If you have been with the same cloud provider for several years, it is a good idea to revisit the data protection services they provide. IT managers should assess the current disaster recovery plan and requirements in place in comparison with another partner to determine if they could more adequately meet security and compliance conditions. 5 Cost is not competitive As with any maturing technology, there are a growing number of cloud service providers offering competitive pricing. It is a good idea to regularly evaluate the cost and quality of your cloud provider and determine if it is time to consider a new vendor with competitive pricing or additional capabilities. 1 Computerworld, Cloud Jumping: When it s time to switch providers, February 2, VelocityCloud.com 3

3 Questions to Ask Cloud Service Providers Moving from Cloud to Cloud If these factors apply to you, it may be time to start looking at other cloud hosting options and vendors. Ask all new cloud partners you are evaluating the following questions: Although migrating from one cloud to another will be easier than your initial adoption, there are several questions that need to be answered including: Is your cloud scalable enough to meet changing business needs? What is your downtime history? What are your disaster recovery and retention procedures? What security and compliance requirements do you meet? What customer support services do you offer? What integration capabilities do you have? It is also recommended that businesses review their service level agreements with IT, legal and finance. Some organizations even choose to verify each provider s capabilities with an audit. What length of downtime is acceptable for the business and how can the impact be minimized? What amount of data will need to be migrated? Will the move require any development efforts? How long will the migration take and how can we prepare? How will the new cloud service provider assess, improve and manage your disaster recovery plan? What level of customer intimacy and partnership does the new cloud service provider offer? Having a plan in place to move workloads between cloud service providers is critical for business continuity. Similar to the initial move to the cloud, organizations will need support from both sides during the migration process. 4 VelocityCloud.com 5

4 Velocity s Universal Cloud Services Velocity Technology Solutions is the go-to partner for businesses looking for a reliable, experienced cloud hosting service provider. The benefits of partnering with Velocity include: Expertise in hosting and managing multiple applications: elocity provides application expertise across leading enterprise software, including V Oracle, SAP, Infor and related third party software. We can deliver integrated solutions and best practices that help you maximize the productivity of your enterprise software investments. Optimized performance: Our proprietary infrastructure design and cloud management platform is optimized for the performance of your entire application portfolio and the end-to-end business processes your software supports. 24/7 Global support: Velocity is the trusted partner for rapidly deploying application software into a secure and resilient virtual private cloud. Customers trust Velocity with more than a petabyte of their data, so we protect it with the security only a private cloud can provide. Velocity supports enterprise applications with 24/7/365 global support from a team of experts with application-level expertise. Application-Specific Configuration: Velocity will configure your environment according to the applications, technology and workload hosted, designed with the end state in mind. Velocity s customers enjoy the scalability, flexibility and cost benefits of our purpose-built cloud because we invest in the latest hardware, virtualization technology and expertise. Disaster Recovery Services: Velocity s Managed Disaster Recovery Services protect our customers Velocity hosted applications and on-premise environment to meet any recovery time (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO). Resiliency: Velocity supports millions of end users on our virtual private cloud platform. We invest in high performance technologies and rigorous IT standards such as ITIL and SSAE16 to deliver the reliability, security and performance our customers need for their enterprise applications. 6 VelocityCloud.com 7

5 Velocity Technology Solutions, Inc. is a leader in enterprise and business application hosting services which are fully-managed and protected within a virtual private cloud. Velocity lowers operational costs, provides world-class customer experiences, and delivers application access at top levels of performance and availability. Velocity s expertise managing software 24/7, combined with its proprietary infrastructure design and cloud management platform, guarantee availability, security, and control over your enterprise software. Velocity is the trusted partner for rapidly deploying application software into a secure and resilient virtual private cloud. Velocity is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina with facilities in North America, Europe, and Asia. Velocity is a portfolio company of Silver Lake Sumeru, a global leader in private equity investments in growth-oriented technology and technology-enabled companies. Velocity Technology Solutions 1901 Roxborough Road, 4th Floor Charlotte, NC Phone: VelocityCloud.com Velocity and the Velocity logo are registered trademarks of Velocity Technology Solutions, Inc Velocity Technology Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners TOP5CLOUD