This year at Data Summit 2017, Michael Corey, director, cloud computing evangelist, Spectrum Enterprise Navisite, and Don Sullivan, product line marketing manager for Business Critical Applications, VMware, discussed cloud myths and realities in a session titled, “The Cloud Landscape Today.”
In the Wild west of public cloud services, companies need a trusted advisor, said Sullivan and Corey, who noted that fork lifting applications to the cloud is not the same as architecting for the cloud, one size does not fit all, and the cloud is not always cheaper.
While it is not wise to put all your eggs in one basket, it is also a fact that architecting a multi-cloud environment is hard. Cloud providers are still fighting for dominance, and though it may seem that there are clear winners and losers today, it is important to remember that these are still early days and it is a land grab as far as market share, they noted.
To help organizations evaluate vendors, Corey and Sullivan offered a offered a checklist of capabilities to consider when selecting a public cloud provider.
Manageability
- Single Pane of Glass To Manage it All
- Do They Offer Single Bill for All Services
- Will They Analyze the Bill
- Single Monitoring & Alerting Platform
- Do they have a cloud calculator
Recoverability
- What are the Published Recovery Stats
- Establish SLA’s with Real Penalties for Failure
- % of VM’s that are replication targets
- What Hypervisor is being used? (Not All Hypervisors are Equal)
Security & Compliance
- What Industry Certifications do you have ? SOC2, MSP/Cloud Verify, PCI…
- Do Services like Security, Database Services Work Accross Platforms
- Scrutize The Vendors Security Measures
- How do the vendors validate the security of their vendors
Support
- How is the Support Team Structured & Bonused?
- Any Quality Measurement Programs? Net Promoter Score (NPS)?
- What is the Emergency Response Process ?
- What is Your Post-Emergency Reponse Process? (Root Cause Analysis)
The cloud provides many new opportunities but also new risks. “Leaving your credit card at the bar is convenient, until you get the bill,” said Corey. “That’s a brutal hangover,” said Sullivan.
Many conference presentations have been made available by speakers at www.dbta.com/datasummit/2017/presentations.aspx.