Trusting your Cloud Service Provider

One of the key challenges faced by users and suppliers alike in the new world of IT as a Service - is who am I dealing with? What can I find out about them? Can I trust them to run a service for me? Will they be there tomorrow. Colleagues in the UK service provider industry have developed a proposal which might help. The Cloud Industry Forum is an initiative which seeks to allow Service Providers to declare themselves in a coherent and open fashion. So that you will know who you are dealing with, who owns/runs the company and where their facilities are. These are key elements in developing an outsourcing relationship and this initiative is a good start to the process of openness. Let's face it, we are walking into a world where we do business on a personal or a professional level, with people we have never met in places we don't know exist. You try finding out where Amazon has its Data Centres! Take a look and let the team know what you think. Next step is knowing who we are when we strike an online deal with a service provider ... but that's another story!