×
A drawing of laptops plugged in to clouds

What to Look for in Your Cloud Hosting Providers

What are Cloud Hosting Providers?

Growing your business involves investing in the latest technology. The cloud is a popular form of storing, accessing, and editing data for businesses of all sizes. While you may not be familiar with all the different applications that are provided by cloud hosting providers, you must understand what to look for when assessing what providers to use for your business.

Before you can decide what cloud hosting providers are the best to fit your needs, you first need to fully understand what the cloud computing definition involves. Cloud hosting is defined as the procurement of resources from a cloud computer facility. This is used to host services, solutions, and data for businesses.

In simpler terms, the cloud computing definition is the use of virtual storage, solutions, hardware, and networks from a provider. With cloud hosting, the use of the data can be accessed by multiple users simultaneously. This allows for easy access to all members of your staff without having to have a physical wired connection to the data storage center. There are many cloud hosting providers to choose from.

Cloud Providers For Small Business

There are many cloud hosting providers for small business and big businesses alike. Deciding on the right provider comes down to which company can best fit the individual needs of your business. You should also keep in mind how your needs are going to continue to grow over time when making your decision on who you use.

Some of the best cloud computing applications include Amazon, Sap, TMD Hosting, Zerox, and CDW. These are just a handful of the many cloud hosting providers that you have available to you. Let's take a look at some of the criteria that you should be using to evaluate potential corporate cloud computing providers.

Security

One of the biggest concerns you should have about any corporate cloud computing provider is their security measures. You should understand what comes with their usual hosting packages and what extras are available for purchase. Each industry has its governmental regulations they must follow when it comes to data security. You want to ask any potential hosted cloud providers about their security and if it will meet or exceed your set standards.

Compliance

This applies to some specific industries where there are particular ways that data must be filled out. For example, SOC 2, PCI DSS, GDPR, and HIPAA are all frameworks that must be complied to. The best cloud computing applications will know your industry and have their products set up specifically with your industry compliance standards in mind. If not, be sure to see what sort of expenses you would be looking at to customize the hosting package to meet your specific compliance needs.

Support

Cloud based service providers all come with some sort of support program. This is there to help you when you're having issues with the service. However, you shouldn't just assume that the best cloud computing service will have around the clock support. Some hosted cloud providers only offer regular business hours. Others will charge you an additional fee for after-hours support. You should opt for cloud hosting options that allow you to have 24/7 support without any additional fee.

Picking the best cloud computing service for your company can seem confusing at first. SAP, Amazon, Zerox, CDW, and TMD hosting are just a few of the many cloud based service providers that you can look into and pick from. By utilizing the criteria we set out for you above, you'll be better able to find a service provider that can fit your company's cloud computing needs.