Cloud Consulting Services Guide

Learn how to hire cloud consulting services for your startup, SME, or enterprise. With the right talent, you can take advantage of cloud technology to improve and scale up your business operations.

What happens when disaster strikes and you lose business data? Why should you risk interrupting business operations when you can store your brand’s ledgers or HR files on the cloud?

Since cloud technology has shaken up the business world, businesses are now adopting cloud computing services at an unprecedented rate, and for good reason. Cloud consulting services can help your business identify ways you can implement cloud solutions and streamline your business. 

With this cloud consulting hiring guide, you can learn what to look for to get the best team for your project. You can also learn what questions to ask your prospective consulting team to gauge whether they have what it takes for your project's success.

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What are Cloud Consulting Services?

Cloud computing is one of the leading technologies powering how the world operates. The term cloud refers to web-connected servers that you can access and use as long as you're connected to the internet. In other words, the cloud can offer solutions from a remote location.

You likely interact with the cloud nearly every day. You probably check your Gmail inbox every morning or listen to your favorite artist on Spotify as soon as you get home. On the weekends, you may also binge-watch your favorite TV shows on Netflix. When you do this, you're accessing data or information that’s stored somewhere else in the world. These work emails and videos aren’t stored on your device, but thanks to cloud technology, you can quickly access them.

Cloud consulting is all about helping you identify the best way to leverage the cloud based on your business needs. For instance, they can identify ways you can use the cloud for storage, SaaS solutions, and even database management services in the cloud.

Moreover, the cloud can help your business overcome platform dependency issues. This technology allows your workforce to work smarter and more efficiently, whether they're in the office, at home, or in a coffee shop downtown. Cloud technology offers an excellent way to run and scale your business’ infrastructure as you grow.

Overall, this can lead to more efficient processes, lower costs, and overall better performance. Making such infrastructure readily available over the net, rather than housing it in your headquarters, allows your business to offer faster, on-demand resources to your staff and customers.

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5 Benefits of Cloud Consulting Services

Cloud technology is a huge leap from the traditional way businesses handle computing resources. As a business owner or executive, embracing cloud technology can help your business operate more efficiently while reducing its physical IT footprint.

Here are five reasons why your business should turn to cloud consulting services:

1. Advanced security: Data breaches happen daily in the business world and can expose sensitive business and customer information. With the cloud, sensitive business data is protected using advanced security features like access management, authentication, and data encryption.
   
2. Disaster recovery: Downtime and data loss can lead to irreparable loss to your brand. By adopting cloud technology, you can brace yourself and protect your business against unforeseen events, such as hardware failure and power outages. Cloud technology may also help with disaster recovery during acts of God, such as floods or earthquakes. 
   
3. Ability to track and manage data: Your cloud consulting services provider may offer analytics and reporting tools to monitor data usage and user behavior.
   
4. Employees can access data anywhere: Cloud storage allows you to make data available for your staff anywhere they are, at any time they need it. As long as they're connected to the internet, your employees can access business data from anywhere in the world.
   
5. Business continuity: If your business faces a catastrophic event, such as your premises going up in flames, the cloud can help you maintain your operations remotely. Cloud technology lets your business stay afloat through disasters, ultimately painting a positive brand image during trying times.
   

4 Ways Cloud Consulting Services Can Support Your Business

As mentioned before, cloud consulting companies are familiar with different ways businesses like yours can leverage cloud technology. In addition to helping you navigate the complexities of cloud, all while keeping your specific business needs in mind. Depending on your business goals, the size of your company, and your specific needs, they will be able to assist with: 

1. Online data storage
2. Database management
3. Analytics & intelligence
4. Backups & recovery

Online Data Storage

You interact with platforms that offer online storage solutions for users every day. Take, for instance, YouTube or Instagram, where users upload content, or businesses upload videos of their products or services. Such platforms offer online storage solutions that allow users to post content they’ve made and edited.

As a business owner or C-suite executive, it’s important to back up your physical files onto the cloud. Alternatively, why not fully digitize your business records and eliminate any physical footprint? Using cloud storage, your business can store and back up tons of data online, such as business transactions, product inventory, and customer details.

Database Management

When your business adopts the cloud, you, your staff, and your customers can access business services from anywhere. You can optimize networks and manage data online, which reduces the amount of work for your onsite team. Cloud service platforms like Amazon and Google offer virtual environments for your business to store and organize data easily. This, in turn, allows your business to run more efficiently and save on in-house storage space.

Analytics & Intelligence

You have most likely heard of machine learning and big data. When you adopt a cloud solution, you gain access to data insights regarding business operations and potential customers. Cloud technology can help you figure out how to improve business processes like inventory management. Analytics and intelligence can also help you predict whether the demand for your products or services will shoot up, as well as identify new audiences.

Backups & Recovery

You most likely save photos you never want to lose on iCloud. What happens when you lose your phone and your photos? You log in to your iCloud account and download your photos or documents. Cloud solutions make this possible.

You can also back up important business data on cloud platforms, such as Google or Azure. In the event you lose data stored in your physical offices in a fire or robbery, you can access and download all the data that you uploaded on cloud servers. This allows you to continue with business operations without major hitches or disgruntled suppliers and customers.

Specialized Cloud Consulting Services

The solution your cloud consulting partner recommends will largely depend on your business objectives: 

• AWS Cloud Consulting
• Azure Cloud Consulting
• Google Cloud
• AWS DevOps
• Azure Migration

AWS Cloud Consulting

This service helps you plan and optimize how your business will adopt and use Amazon Web Services (AWS). As a business that relies on AWS cloud infrastructure, you should assess your project’s cost versus its effectiveness, the performance of cloud resources, and whether the cloud platform is vulnerable to any security threats.

Azure Cloud Consulting

This service will assist you with setting up the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. With the right development team, you can get faster responses when your employees or customers access cloud services. Tracking metrics such as error rates and how the platform uses resources helps improve performance and user experience.

Google Cloud

This cloud computing platform allows you to build and run websites and applications from anywhere. You can measure the success of this platform by tracking response times when users are on it, as well as how vulnerable your business is to threats, such as data breaches.

AWS DevOps

DevOps involves the collaboration of AWS developers and the IT operations team. To assess the success of AWS DevOps, you may track the time from conceptualization to deployment and how often deployment occurs. 

Azure Migration

This service involves moving business data and resources from your on-premises servers to the Azure cloud platform. To assess the success of your business’ data migration, you can look at the number of successful migrations, the time taken during migration, and the overall cost. Some of the benefits of Azure cloud migration that your business can enjoy include enhanced security, scalability, and backup recovery capabilities with a click of a button.

How To Assess Cloud Consulting Services

If you invest in something, you hope for a return. At the end of the day, you should know whether your investment was worth it. The same applies to cloud consulting services. 

As a business owner, you should measure the success of your project. Doing this helps you understand what you're doing right and what needs improvement. Here are the key metrics you should track during your project to assess cloud computing services:

• Customer satisfaction: Successful cloud strategies should have a positive impact on your customers, whether your cloud solutions are for internal use or for client use. Client satisfaction can help you understand how the cloud solution impacts your business. 
  
• Scalability: As your business grows, your cloud solution should be able to grow with it. Ideally, your cloud solution should be able to support more users as your internal team or customer base expands. 
  
• Utilization: The cloud solution that you implement is only valuable if your team or primary audience is actually using it. Utilization rates can help you understand how effective the solution is. 
  
• Security and compliance: Keeping your business’s and your customers’ data safe and private needs to be an utmost priority.
  

Who Makes Up a Cloud Computing Services Team

When thinking about hiring cloud computing services for your business, you should take steps to hire the right talent to meet your business needs. With the right cloud computing services team, you can build and migrate your workload onto a cloud platform to guarantee seamless business operations. Your team can move business data to the cloud and allow business continuity in the event of a catastrophic event.

Here are some of the team members who can make your cloud services project a success:

• Cloud Architects: They're responsible for supervising your company’s cloud computing strategy and designing applications. They also develop migration plans and perform ongoing maintenance of your business’s cloud computing architecture.
  
• Cloud Engineers: These teammates handle the deployment of your brand’s cloud infrastructure, including network design, resource allocation, and cloud security. They also look for new opportunities for automation as well as performance optimization.
  
• Software Developers: Experts in this area develop and integrate programs that run and are stored on cloud platforms. They can also upgrade your existing system and integrate cloud computing services.
  
• Cloud Security Specialists: As a business owner, you don’t want unauthorized access to sensitive business data, such as intellectual property and trade secrets. These specialists run risk assessments to test cloud vulnerabilities and prevent data breaches. 
  
• Cloud Compliance Specialists: These specialists develop and maintain business privacy policies according to industry security standards and regulations. They conduct ongoing reviews and proactive measures to guarantee compliance with privacy guidelines and prevent potential violations.
  

What to Look For When Hiring a Cloud Consulting Firm

There are several skills you should look for and questions to ask when evaluating your options. The first step is to identify your business’s specific needs. For instance, if you want to improve the security of your cloud system, you’ll need a cloud security specialist. Or perhaps you're looking for someone to handle your cloud consulting strategy. In this case, you’ll need a skilled cloud architect.

Criteria for Hiring Cloud Computing Services

It’s always important to brainstorm with your team and evaluate all the options on the table. With Clutch, you can review client testimonials and find the right partner for your cloud project.

10 Questions to Ask When Hiring Cloud ConsultingServices

1. What is your experience with various cloud solutions?
   
2. Does your team have relevant AWS, Azure, or GCP certifications?
   
3. What are the important considerations when designing a cloud system?
   
4. Can you walk us through your migration strategy?
   
5. How do you communicate project reports and technical requirements to non-technical stakeholders?
   
6. How long will it take from designing to deploying my project?
   
7. How do you monitor my system’s performance and security?
   
8. How many team members will be working on my project?
   
9. How do you handle large-scale projects? 
   
10. Do you offer support and maintenance services post-deployment?
    

Search for Cloud Consulting Services Based on Project Requirements

Even seasoned hiring managers struggle to hire cloud consulting services teams, partly because of the highly technical nature of this niche. Hiring for these roles can pull you away from your core business functions. Clutch offers a comprehensive list of service providers for you to find the best fit based on your project requirements.

Find the Right Partner for Your Cloud Consulting Project

The need for cloud consulting services is vast, and the pool of talent is finite.  

By turning to a platform like Clutch, you can find the cloud consulting team you need while feeling confident that they're the best fit for your project. You can choose from a wide range of cloud consulting service providers based on your specific needs and budget. This allows you to get the most out of your service provider while enjoying the benefits of cloud consulting

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