4 “Gotchas” most IT pros won’t tell you when selling you their Cloud solution

Are you using any cloud applications to store data (and aren’t most of us) ? Then listen up! There are a few “gotchas” you need to know about 3rd-party cloud apps that most sales reps will never tell you.

1. They aren’t responsible for keeping a backup of your data. If you read the small print of your contract, you’ll see that in every way possible, your cloud provider is NOT responsible for data loss or backups – even if it’s their fault. In fact, Office 365 will only keep 3 days’ backup of your data; so if you delete or overwrite a file and don’t notice it until 4-5 days later, it’s GONE. If your data is important, you need to implement a backup solution that works with cloud applications. 2. What you see may NOT be what you get. There’s nothing more frustrating than an incredibly slow application when you’re trying to work. But there are a lot of things that can determine how fast your cloud applications run, such as the file size you’re working on, CPUs and RAM and storage, time of day, day of the week, your Internet connection and the number of users accessing the application. Make sure you get some verification of the speed in your specific environment before spending a lot of money, time and aggravation moving to a new cloud application. 3. What if they cancel you? Here’s a scary situation: what if your cloud provider decides to shut down your account because they go out of business or simply decide not to service you anymore? Or what if you want out? Make sure you have in writing what happens if you cancel your contract and what your cloud provider can and cannot do if they go out of business, cancel your account or have any other issues that would cause service interruption. Moving a network from a cloud platform is NOT a simple task and you need to make sure you can get your data and that you’ll be given sufficient time to make the transition. 4. Where is your data located? Believe it or not, most of us don’t know where our cloud data is stored. After all, we are talking about your financial information, client data, and other sensitive information! Canadian businesses can avoid the implications of the US Patriot act by insisting that all of their data - file storage, email, backups, applications (may not always be possible), replication sites, everything - be stored in Canadian owned, operated and managed facilities only, and not scattered around sites in the US and around the globe. If you need help preparing your plan to move to your business to the cloud, or if you still have concerns about the cloud, don’t hesitate to give us a call and we’ll help you put in place a solid plan to get you there.