How To Choose The Best Cloud Computing Service

Cloud computing is new wave of the future. It provides software, hosting and storage services that enable you to access your data from anywhere without requiring the knowledge about physical location of the system that provides those cloud services.

Hosting applications in the cloud increases the mobility of a workforce. Consumers should perform adequate research before selecting a cloud computing service provider. In this article, the top 10 cloud computing service providers will be reviewed for your edification.

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Criteria for Selecting Cloud Computing Service Providers

Before listing the top 10 cloud computing service providers, business owners should become familiar with basic requirements for all cloud computing. Some of the basic clouding computing criteria are as given below:

Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Every client must sign a SLA that states the penalties the company will incur if the service is not delivered as promised or not monitored as promised. All clients should ensure that the contract will protect the company and their data. Companies should not allow cloud service providers to host mission-critical applications or data without negotiating the SLA.

Support: The cloud service provider should guarantee at least 99% uptime of applications in the cloud and also adequate support of applications in the cloud. This includes monitoring applications 24 hours per day and seven days per week.

Billing and Accounting: Billing and account management must be simple. The customers may accrue unexpected bills if they do not acquire a plan with a low monthly or annual fee. With these plans, companies may purchase as much bandwidth as necessary to accommodate their applications.

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs): Ensure the Cloud Interface features APIs and data transformation capabilities. This provides a standard for companies that require access to applications in the cloud.

Data and Application Architecture: The architecture must support fast transitions of applications to and from the cloud. This may require managing and packaging data over a modular architecture. The IT department should have a solution in place that is independent of the packaged application, transactional system or data environment.

Other Criteria:
- Identity management, access control, authorization and authentication must also be in place to ensure appropriate operation of cloud computing environment. Adequate encryption and security measures must be in place to alleviate client concerns of sensitive data getting into the hands of hackers. The risks of hackers must also be reduced or mitigated.
- Cloud providers should also use multiple network paths and also account for function chain failover. Those cloud computing providers with service priority for best performance. This is typically indicated by multi-protocol labeling service (MLPS) and 802.1.

Top 7 Cloud Computing Services

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Amazon: Amazon Web Services is, by far, deemed to be the number one cloud services provider for 2011. Amazon routes all support calls to an engineering specialist.

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Rackspace: Rackspace is the second ranked cloud computing provider after Amazon. The company intends to acquire Cloudkick, a cloud management technology firm that may improve its product offering.

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Salesforce.com: Salesforce.com offers both Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). The company is expanding with the acquisition of Heroku.

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IBM: IBM offers Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as its entrance into the cloud computing arena. IBM earned $30 million in cloud revenue in 2010. IBM may be one of the only companies winning any enterprise business.

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Verizon: Verizon built its own proprietary cloud computing infrastructure. Verizon suffered some difficulty with the infrastructure when it first began. With the acquisition of Terremark, Verizon moved into the enterprise market. Verizon is purportedly poised to be the leading competitor in cloud computing services.

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Microsoft: Microsoft’s Azure cloud services recruited 31,000 companies to host applications in a cloud environment. Many start-ups, mobile companies and social networking firms use the services, but traditional companies are not signing up for the services.

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Google App Engine: Google App Engine is popular with gaming and mobile companies. This company offers services to companies of similar caliber to Microsoft Azure. This company is adding SLA and hosted SQL to provide more security, reliability and flexibility. The addition will hopefully attract the traditional or enterprise developers.

Other Cloud Computing Services:

BlueLock:BlueLock’s cloud computing services are based upon VMware’s vCloud Express. This company combines vCloud resources to improve the delivery of the cloud services offered. The company is small but expected to grow.

NephoScale: This cloud computing service is building its own data center. Their business model is similar to Amazon Web Services or Rackspace.

Joyent:Joyent is recognized because they formed a partnership with Dell to sell cloud infrastructure packages that are pre-configured.

CSC:BizCloud is a private cloud service that utilizes VMware, Cisco and EMC. Private cloud services alleviate some concerns of data hacking associated with hosting company sensitive information. The option for public cloud service is available for extra bandwidth.

This is a guest article by Ruben Corbo, a writer for the website http://www.broadbandexpert.com where you can find high speed internet providers in your area and compare prices on different deals for your wireless internet necessities.

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