ViaWest checklist identify the right cloud model for you.

Identify the Right Cloud Model for You All cloud solutions are not the same and neither are your requirements. Picking the right cloud model for the type of business problem you are trying to solve can be the most important decision you can make. This checklist will help guide you to identify the cloud model that best fits your business and application needs.

There are generally three cloud models to choose from:

Private Cloud A private cloud solution offers dedicated physical servers to support a pool of virtual machines.

A private cloud can provide guaranteed performance, more control, and predictable costs.

Public Cloud

Hybrid Cloud

With a public cloud, you share a set of servers and resources with other companies.

However, a public cloud offers a pay-as-yougo pricing model. The managed hosting provider generally controls and maintains the subscription and resources based on Service Level Agreement (SLA) and client agreements.

Hybrid Cloud solutions combine features and benefits of the public cloud, private cloud, or dedicated servers to distribute the workloads and optimize the environment.

Analyze Business Needs Not all cloud models will work for your business or application. In order to narrow down your cloud search, you need to understand your business’s and applications’ needs, strengths, and limitations.

The questions below provide a good starting point to identify whether a private, public, or hybrid cloud model is right for your business.

Do you need the flexibility to scale in response to periodic peaks of high-traffic?

Yes

No

Do your users expect predictable performance each time they use your services?

Yes

No

Will you be turning the services on and off based on need rather than keeping it on all the time?

Yes

No

Does your business need to comply with federally mandated or industry governed standards (HIPAA, PCI, etc.) for securing users’ private information?

Yes

No

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Evaluating Your Responses Your answers to the questions on the previous page and this chart can help you narrow down your cloud search.

Private

Public

Hybrid

If you answered “Yes” to any of the questions on the previous page, the cloud offering that corresponds with your answer to that question will be marked with a symbol.

Scalability: In a public cloud, you have the ability to scale vertically to add more resources to an existing server or scale horizontally to duplicate any existing servers.

Performance: A private cloud gives you predictable performance and allows you to plan around the infrastructure resources you need to be successful, not the resources you and your mysterious neighbors are sharing.

Cost: A public cloud tends to be more cost effective than a private cloud, because most public cloud pricing models are pay-as-you-go. This is ideal if you are turning services off and on based on business needs.

With a private cloud, you pay for the resources defined in your bucket—whether you use the resources or not.

Security and Compliance: In the private cloud, you have more control to put the pieces in place to create a custom secure and compliant environment, where in a public cloud, you are more dependent on the third party.

Select Your Management Team In selecting a solution you need to determine how much expertise you have in house and how much you need from a hosting partner. Whether public, private, or hybrid, having a managed hosting company that can augment your skills with proven experience in designing, implementing, and supporting your cloud will be critical.

To learn more about additional ViaWest solutions, contact us at 1-877-448-9378 or sales@viawest.com ViaWest and the ViaWest logo are registered trademarks of ViaWest, Inc.