Ten Cloud Do's and Don'ts

Many companies that have begun to move into the cloud don't do a lot of planning. This chapter presents some ideas about what one should do and what one should avoid as they begin their journey to the cloud. Public cloud services offer incredible ease of use and flexibility to add and subtract services as needs change. Increasingly, businesses are finding that they are using more than one public cloud across the organization. Many companies that are using software as a service (SaaS) don't make plans for the future, including what happens if their SaaS vendor goes out of business or becomes too expensive. All public cloud vendors, including infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, and SaaS providers, will offer some sort of service level agreement that explains what obligation the vendor assumes and what risks one have to assume.