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In the past, making the right decision involved working with a reseller or integrator to get the balance right between business needs, technical requirements and price; it is now becoming infinitely more complex. Few resellers can offer their own 'pay as you go' model and are more likely to be 'cloud brokers' offering a combination of services which may mean multiple terms of service - and more legal checking.
Understanding what service providers offer
In order to take a more holistic approach to storage, backup and archive, organisations need to be able to compare 'like with like'. They need to fully understand what the service provider is actually offering compared to what they can deliver for themselves; doing this right generally means the unpleasantness of properly surveying what you have and what you're doing with it.
The good news is that many service providers also offer services to help you build a picture of what's really going on and what it really costs. While you might think the results could be loaded in favour of getting a service, you'd be surprised - they mostly give a clear direction either way that is hard to fake.
For smaller organisations, the decision to use a service is relatively easy. Although there has been a significant uptake by SMBs for cloud storage because it provides a quick, flexible and (often) lower cost solution, there is a concern that few check the terms and conditions. This is a mistake that larger organisations with more complex or specific requirements simply can't afford to make; they need to have the ultimate levels of confidence in the platform underpinning the cloud service.
For example, many of the products used to create a cloud-based solution that you might be prepared to bet your business on could be open source, freeware or even products you have discounted as unsuitable yourself. So while the expertise of the provider may mean everything will run satisfactorily under normal circumstances, it's still worth investigating what infrastructure they use. The good service providers will be open with you. If the terms of service and SLA's appear to be exactly what you want, you could argue that the tools don't matter but I suggest that where technology is concerned, the opposite is the case.
In the financial services, legal and retail sectors Intellectual Property (IP) is a critical factor; here the technical choices of the service provider are arguably more important in terms of data security. Historically these organisations have thought it inappropriate for a third party to take responsibility for any IP data but they may well be prepared for less important data to be managed externally.
This attitude is shifting and more organisations are trusting others with their crown jewels. However, where only the systems outside the core find themselves in the cloud, it must be remembered that data invariably 'leaks' from the core IP locations out into the secondary systems, so if these are considered for a move to the cloud, security is still just as important.
Clearly one size does not fit all but the diversity and choice available makes the cloud a very real solution for many CxO's and IT Directors. Whether it's appropriate for all organisations to take a 'Cloud First' approach to data management is another matter again.
