7 mistakes to Avoid When Purchasing IaaS

Posted on September 26, 2012

Posted by Gerben Meijer in Cloud Security 0 Comments

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a growing cloud solution for businesses of all sizes and in any industry. IaaS provides the servers, storage, and connectivity capabilities, while the business just needs a secured Internet connection. The benefits of IaaS include the elimination of hardware or storage at the business location, and a reduced need for troubleshooting and maintenance tasks for IT.

However, it is important to beware of some mistakes that could happen when implementing IaaS at your organization. Here are 7 mistakes that should be avoided:

Minimal research before choosing your IaaS provider. As new providers emerge, it is important to weed out the ones that cannot provide the services that your business needs in order to operate. Evaluate at least three different providers before making your decision.
Insufficient requirements defined. Be sure to closely examine the applications that will be used in the cloud services, the number of users, and the storage capacity that you currently use.
Failure to look into the future. Not only should you look at your current utilization, but also consider your future growth requirements. Will you be adding new software? Expanding your business? How much will your storage requirements increase?
Using a boiler plate SLA. The service level agreement (SLA) with your IaaS provider needs to be tailored to your specific business requirements. What is your availability requirements? How often do you want backups performed? What should be the term of the agreement? What should happen if there is a failure?
Rush to implement. Allow yourself sufficient time for planning and transitioning to IaaS. Moving too fast can increase the changes of oversight or failure.
Overlooking performance requirement. Make sure you carefully evaluate the performance and speed of your IaaS solution. It should meet or exceed your traditional infrastructure performance.
Security oversights. A strong governance and security policy must be in place so that authorized users do not overstep their authority, viruses are prevented and that intruders are blocked according to your business policies.

By learning from these mistakes your business can realize a very successful IaaS implementation.

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