Ten Questions That Will Tell You if Your Cloud Provider Is Enterprise-Ready

When it comes to selecting a cloud computing provider, most people already think of these services as pretty much commodity offerings.

But the folks at F5 Networks, which provide a fair amount of the IT infrastructure used to manage cloud computing services, would beg to differ. In fact, they are offering up a list of 10 questions that IT organizations should be asking cloud computing providers before signing on the dotted line. Be sure to read our Mike Vizard’s post on the subject over at his blog.

Of course, what many IT organizations may discover is that they might be better off building their own internal private cloud depending on their requirements. But while the debate between public and private clouds rages on, IT organizations would be well-advised to do their cloud computing homework before signing a multi-year contract they might come to regret in a few months time.

Click through for suggestions from F5 Networks on key issues to cover with potential vendors.

Hint: Most cloud computing providers define SLAs as best effort.

Hint: Most cloud computing providers equate access control with passwords.

Hint: Corrct answer shold involve more than a firewall at the perimeter of the network.

Hint: If the service is defined by number of available servers in a rack, that’s called hosting.

Hint: Value-added services usually don’t come with an Open API.

Hint: Some cloud providers are optimized around certain application architectures.

Hint: We’re going to live in a world of heterogenous virtual machines

Hint: You can’t manage what you don’t have visibility into.

Hint: Mobility is changing the way we think about application usage in the cloud.

Hint: If they have a different computing model, they might not be the right partner.