If you’ve been investigating moving your business applications to a Cloud provider to lessen the load on internal IT resources, you’ve probably noticed a significant variance in pricing among providers. Determining why these prices vary so markedly isn’t as straightforward as one might hope.
Cloud suppliers use several tactics to drive down their prices, but each tactic shifts more risk onto their customers. Here are some of the tactics to watch out for:
Tactic 1: Making Mandatory Services Optional
Risk
By downplaying the significance of certain services and making them optional, buyers often overlook these essential services. This oversight can expose businesses to potential issues such as inadequate backup security, lack of antivirus protection, and insufficient firewall services. Lower-priced private cloud hosting providers tend to offer minimal IT security services, often neglecting crucial aspects like DDoS protection.
Service Requirement
When choosing a Cloud hosting service, prioritize security. Insist on your provider using the latest market-leading security software to protect your data.
Tactic 2: Inadequate Backup Retention Policies
Risk
Lower-priced private cloud hosting providers often have rudimentary backup retention policies that rarely comply with obligations to retain data for taxation purposes. This approach can compromise business continuity and disaster recovery.
Service Requirement
Understand your data retention obligations and assess your risk tolerance for data security. Ensure your provider offers secondary data storage at a secondary data center and maintains multiple data sets to safeguard your business.
Tactic 3: Volumetric Pricing
Risk
Many Cloud hosting providers advertise a fixed monthly fee but include hidden volumetric fees in the fine print. These fees, based on usage or consumption bands, can lead to unexpected and substantial cost increases.
Service Requirement
Before signing any Cloud contract, thoroughly understand the billing structure and what triggers additional fees. Be aware of any tactics that reduce services once you reach a certain threshold to avoid negative impacts on your business.
Tactic 4: Using Low-Ranked Data Centers
Risk
To cut costs, some low-cost operators situate their Cloud equipment in low-ranked data centers with poor security and no redundancy. Others may operate out of their premises without redundant power supplies, environmental controls, or multiple internet suppliers. This can lead to risks such as theft, equipment malfunction, and financial instability of the data center.
Service Requirement
Choose a Cloud service provider that uses a Tier 4 rated Data Center, which is the highest industry rating. Ensure the facility has robust access, heating, cooling, redundancies, and financial stability.
Why You Should Consider CitySoft’s NetCloud
CitySoft’s NetCloud team are experts in hosting mission-critical Sage and SAP Business One ERP software. Our IT equipment is located at a Tier 4 data center in Port Melbourne, the highest rating, and we operate a remote secondary data center to offer clients peace of mind regarding business continuity and disaster recovery. CitySoft’s NetCloud data retention policies exceed mandatory ATO business data retention requirements, and we partner with leading suppliers of security software systems to provide the best defenses against cybercriminals. DDoS protection is a standard inclusion in our service offering.