There are a number of important steps to be taken before your organization moves full speed into the cloud. For example, senior leadership should aggressively focus on the company’s data-management principles, including analytics and security, in concert with how they approach their digital transformation goals.
Modernizing and optimizing your organization’s data management requires going beyond the basics of analytics and security. Criteria for selecting a cloud service provider should be created much as a project leader or project manager would do when structuring a series of steps to achieve success in any new project or endeavor.
First on the agenda should be setting and understanding the business needs of the organization. Are you a small business with 50 or fewer employees? If the organization is at a level of 250 workers or more, it would be considered an “enterprise” business and by now likely already has a serious infrastructure level as it relates to networking, internetworking, financial planning and structure, legal, technology and other mainstream solutions consistent with businesses of this scale.
Services and Solutions
Depending on the scale of the enterprise (or small business), you should thoroughly itemize and lay out how your current or future approach to IT support will be structured, as this is one area that will shift into cloud harmony as a solution provider is selected. Services should include managed and/or co-managed support and a help-desk solution to support employees’ desktops and remote workstation (or mobile) environments. On-site, automated or remote support levels should be defined. An ongoing IT “health check” and cost management/containment platform should be outlined for presentation to a cloud provider or solution’s management resource.
Solutions that should be evaluated when looking at a cloud support and services platform involve the requirements (or not) for a security operations center, how to routinely use and apply concepts such as “penetration testing,” cyber awareness training, managed detection and response (MDR) services, extended detection and response (XDR) services and compliance as a service (CaaS), and include a “cyber risk assessment.”
Other deeper practices that may be available through a cloud service provider could include vulnerability management; identity and access management; mobile-device management; monitoring of dark web and credentials security (Fig. 1); password protection and malware download protection; advanced email protection and monitoring; cloud application (APP) security and firewall as a service (FaaS); SaaS protections; and cyber essentials service through a certification program.
Protection Practices
Cyber essentials certification procedures vary depending on the country, region or locale in which those practices are governed or offered. The scheme is a set of fundamental security measures designed to produce a robust foundation for protecting your organization’s sensitive data and systems.
Key areas of cybersecurity include the implementation of (a) boundary firewalls and internet gateways; (b) security practices and configuration; (c) access control (e.g., “ACLs”); (d) malware protection; and (e) software and application patch management.
When looking at cloud service providers, inquire how or if they offer extensions for any of the above practices (in items a-e) and how they address them.
Broadcast Essentials in Connectivity
Fast and secure access to cloud and data center applications are essential to the organization, regardless of user location. For broadcasters, this became most relevant during the initial stages of the pandemic, when central equipment operations shifted to remote functionality.
Today, an ongoing common challenge is achieving centralized management of multiple locations, including branch offices. For media systems (broadcast news and production), high-speed, reliable bandwidth is necessary for voice, video, data and control/management of data centers and production centers. Support for unified communications has become essential, unlike what news broadcast requirements needed even long before the pandemic.
SD-WAN (Fig. 2) offers a relevant solution that optimizes WAN connectivity with centralized manageability at a fraction of the cost of WAN-only dedicated connectivity. Check that a potential cloud solution provider can support systems such as SD-WAN and where the limitations are.
Service Level Agreements
Check if your candidate cloud provider has service level agreements (SLAs) in place before signing up.
A good cloud service provider will have considered such critical SLA components of a contract and will already have them in place. The contract should define (a) the level of service you can expect; (b) the uptime guarantees; and (c) compensation for service disruptions.
The contract can be refined to include response times and compensation policies in case something goes wrong. An SLA should outline measurable performance benchmarks and should detail response times for support requests and service restoration timelines.
How a provider manages downtime is a metric of how it manages planned maintenance and unplanned outages. Communication protocols and informant timelines related to planned or unplanned service disruptions should be included in any cloud service provider contract.
Administrative Support
Get a checklist that states how the provider deals with (a) performance reporting; (b) resource monitoring; (c) configuration management procedures; (d) and billing or accounting management—each is an important item to check and understand. A provider who cannot address these items to your satisfaction is not the provider for you.
Decision Keys
In summary, the following are key takeaways that should be considered to make an informed decision:
(a) Security and Compliance: Itemize, review and understand that the provider will offer and support a set of robust security measures and that the cloud services will comply with relevant regulations. If you are expecting to work across clouds or international borders, be sure your provider will meet those regulations and report accordingly.
(b) Service Offerings: Evaluate each potential provider and its supported solutions. Ensure the selected provider will offer the services and technical capabilities that support your business needs. If using live A/V solutions, test and be certain the codecs you need are supported and that the data rates meet the needs of your services under heavy loads.
(c) Flexibility and Scalability: Suggest, assess and have the provider demonstrate how they allow you to scale resources as needed. Do they offer customizable solutions? How do they work? How do you assess feasibility and fluidity?
(d) Evaluate the Provider’s Pricing Models: Look at current costs, review expansion costs and look at any penalties and/or costs you will pay to make changes. Model any expected adjustments in advance of signing any contract to best understand the current and future pricing and cost models to avoid unexpected expenses.
(e) Preview SLAs and Reliability: Determine if the provider can offer reliable service with clear SLAs that you understand. Check the extreme ends of your usages (loads, data rates, peak demand) and understand how “overages” impact your cost model—where applicable.
Using Consultants
Cloud consulting services are often available from various companies throughout the industry in which you engage. Most will start with a comprehensive cloud assessment that will present a thorough evaluation of your current needs, available technologies and suggest (or provide) the best cloud-based solution for your business.
Often these are fee-based services that can offer additional services—where desired—such as end-user monitoring and integration, and that will be there on a contract basis to support operations from installation through deployment and turn-up on your system.
Look for a third-party consulting or provisioning organization that specializes in your business’ operational needs (e.g., media operations, streaming, news, production).
