How to Find Right Cloud Hosting Provider for Success

As smartphones have replaced traditional landlines, cloud hosting has replaced the local IT infrastructure. Cloud hosting has become very popular in a short span of time as companies wish to gain remote access to their data. The technology also offers high scalability and great processing speed.

However, several verticals need to be addressed when it comes to picking the right cloud hosting provider for your business. One wrong decision could result in an expensive and not so useful hosting solution. Please note that your requirements will be unique to your organization, so you must think carefully before coming to a final decision.

Below are a few pointers to help you in picking the right hosting provider for success.

1. Business Requirements

As a business owner, you have a clear understanding of how to run it and what you expect from your cloud hosting provider. You do not wish to purchase a solution and then find out that it is of no use. List out your requirements and ask the vendors about their services.

Look for plans that suit your business and eliminate the providers that do not match your business needs. Moreover, also ask the provider if they can customize their plans according to your requirements.

2. Server Performance

Server performance is crucial for selecting the right service provider for your business. Some businesses overlook this factor and end up getting a substandard performance, which does not suit their business. Thus, when selecting the hosting provider, you should know about cloud architecture as well.

Most good cloud hosting providers in the market deploy HPC (High-Performance Computing) servers to provide the best performance to their customers. HPCs offer excellent computing power with high output, which means that all the applications run smoothly on the server.

3. Support

Since not every business has the skill and time to deal with data migration and hardware maintenance, opting for a cloud provider with an expert support team is a must. The local IT team can troubleshoot some minor issues but cannot provide the level of support you need.

Thus, select a cloud provider who offers round the clock customer support so that you do not face any problem while running your business. Before signing the deal, enquire about everything related to the support you will get; the provider will also know what you expect from them.

4. Private Server

You know about your company’s hosting requirements more than anyone. You need multiple business-specific applications, the numbers of users you need is unique to your company, and the like. For instance, if you run a firm that has access to confidential data, you do not wish anyone else to access your server.

In simple words, a private server is a dedicated server that offers benefits like data storage, high performance, data security, and more, without any interruption. If your business involves highly sensitive data, choosing a provider who offers a private server must be on top of your priority list.

5. Data Security

While choosing a cloud hosting provider, data security should be a must on your checklist. For instance, accounting firms have access to a lot of financial data, which can cause serious problems when leaked. Your cloud hosting provider should keep all their security measures updated. Choose a provider that offers: :

• Data encryption to prevent attackers from seeing confidential data.
• Multi-factor user authentication, firewalls, and antivirus.
• Access control policies to prevent unauthorized access to the data.
• Physical security at their data centers, ensuring that no unauthorized person has access to data – CCTV, biometric, and round-the-clock physical are some preventive measures.

6. Data Center Location

In theory, the location of the data center does not affect the performance of the cloud hosting solution. However, data does not travel in a straight line. It travels through multiple nodes to reach the final destination from the source.

So, if there are multiple points between the source and the destination, the latency increases. Increased latency creates bottlenecks that hamper the application performance by increasing the load time. Hence, you should choose a provider that has data centers close to your location.

7. Scalability

There comes a time when you get that much-awaited project to grow your small company. But what if the deadline is tight? There’s a possibility that your sales team might close the deal, but you won’t have sufficient IT resources to complete the project. It will also have a negative impact on your reputation.

The reputed hosting providers scale your business process instantly and offer the server resources that you need. However, it is necessary to discuss the same with your potential service provider as you might need to scale up or down according to your business needs.

8. BCDR

BCDR (Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery) is another crucial factor while picking the right hosting provider. It is important to judge the capabilities of the hosting provider to assist you and prevent data loss in case of a crisis.

The leading hosting providers follow advanced BCDR practices to ensure that your business does not get affected during a crisis. For instance, as the data is stored at multiple data center locations, if an earthquake hits one data center, you can access your data from another data center.

Your hosting provider should ensure that your data is not lost and is recovered quickly.

9. Regular Backups

What would you do if your system crashes one day? What about all the work that you did? It is important that the work that you did must not wipe away just like that; there needs to be a way to get access to it.

Reputed cloud hosting providers offer regular data backups so that you never lose your data. Most of them backup your data automatically during non-business hours on a daily basis. However, you can request them to increase the frequency if you wish to.

10. SLA Guaranteed Uptime

Uptime refers to the duration your business process is available on cloud throughout the year. Your hosting provider has to guarantee a specific uptime so that your access to your data is never restricted.

Reliable service providers offer 99.99% of uptime i.e., approximately 6 minutes of downtime per year. Also, these details are agreed upon in the Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Conclusion

Selecting the right hosting provider is crucial for your company’s success. Thus, you and your firm should analyze all the points mentioned above before finalizing things. One wrong decision and it could spoil the quality of your services and reputation of your firm.

Do you wish to get a cloud hosting solution suitable for your business? Get in touch with our experts at 855-910-6927.