How to Choose a Right Service Provider for Your Cloud Management
One of the fastest needs in the world of Cloud or IT today is that of infrastructure management. The cloud has provided us with capable and efficient solutions to most of our business needs. It has freed up businesses and companies allowing them to grow and perform their services in a manner that is much better than what there would be without the existence of cloud services.
When we talk about cloud infrastructure, we refer to the virtual infrastructure that is delivered or accessed via a network. This network could also be the Internet. The difference between accessing and the delivering of this infrastructure defines whether you have in-house cloud solutions employed to provide access to your employees and branches across the world, or perhaps you are procuring the services of a cloud services provider. The latter is also known as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) which is a basic delivery model of cloud computing.
What is Cloud Managed Services?
Managed Services is the practice of outsourcing cloud or IT management responsibilities to an expert vendor in order to improve IT or Cloud operations, efficiency, and costs. Many companies are starting to see the value of outsourcing the management of their cloud infrastructure to expert companies called Managed Service Providers
You could deploy an in-house cloud infrastructure management team or leave the job up to your internal IT department, but this is often a bad idea. Internal IT departments often don’t possess all the technical skills and diversified knowledge when it comes to effective and efficient management of your cloud infrastructure. Therefore it is better to outsource the management of your cloud infrastructure to a third-party service provider that is the expert in cloud management. Building and deploying your own cloud management team would incur huge costs, time and resources as well.
What to Look for in Your Cloud Infrastructure Management Provider?
A cloud infrastructure management service provider will take the task of managing your cloud infrastructure off your hands, allowing you dedicate your full attention to the running of your core business operations 
while they manage the running of your cloud infrastructure and ensure its uptime, efficient functioning, and security. Choosing the right service provider for this purpose requires much more care than it might sound like and that is why there are a few important things you should consider and look for when picking the right service provider for your cloud infrastructure management.
Confidentiality and Protection
The vendor you pick should be professional and capable enough to guarantee the confidentiality and protection of your data. This means more than just ensuring the security of all your data but goes beyond that. You will be putting your data as well as credentials into the hands of the provider you choose so make sure to exercise all the due diligence to ensure the confidentiality of your data is maintained. Go over the SLA and contract details carefully and even make your provider sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Act) if you have to. Addressing all the legalities will help you pick a vendor capable of guaranteeing the confidentiality and protection of your data.
Experience is key
This is one of the most crucial things to consider when picking the service provider for your cloud’s infrastructure management. Only an experienced cloud management services provider will be able to give your cloud infrastructure the professional attention it needs to keep functioning at max capability while avoiding downtime and security threats.
Be as thorough as you need to be. You shall be putting your data and business into the hands of the provider you choose so it is only fair to do your homework. Check out the company’s own infrastructure, their engineers’ experience, and expertise, availability in case of disaster or emergency. It is especially important to gauge and assess the team of engineers as well as the management team of the service provider to check their credentials and gauging their capability of providing you with professional and uninterrupted cloud management services.
24/7 Availability & Costs Matter
The whole point of deploying your services, applications or workload through the cloud is to make them available round the clock. Your cloud infrastructure needs to be online and functioning 24/7 and that is why it requires a team that can look after and manages it regardless of the constraints of time zones or working hours. This is where an in-house IT team would become a bottleneck to provide you with such a service, but a cloud management service provider will usually provide you with 24/7 monitoring, management, and support. Experience with cost optimization is another factor to look for in a Managed Service Provider. Managed Service Provider can help you save money by optimizing your infrastructure cost while keeping performance in mind.
Day-to-day Support
Your vendor should be able to offer monitoring, day-to-day support, troubleshoot and fix potential issues before they become a too big problem. 
Cloud management service provider often adopt a proactive approach in this regard where they monitor and fix potential issues before they become serious enough to affect your business or cause downtime.
Migration Expertise
Your cloud management service provider should have expertise when it comes to deploying and migrating your application or services to the respective cloud which suits your current and future business needs. Cloud migration experts help you assess prerequisites, streamline migration strategy, planning, testing and executing the migration plan.
Conclusion
Building an in-house team might sound like a good solution for your cloud infrastructure management. However, it is one that is much costlier considering the knowledge and expertise needed for managing different cloud infrastructure, applications, databases etc. compared to outsourcing the management of your cloud to a capable and experienced Cloud Management Service Provider. Additionally, they can provide you a much better and expert level of services at significantly lower cost while also ensuring uptime and availability 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.