CEO
Today, the market is full of cloud services providers – from local to globals ones. Types of technologies used, level of security, approach to customers, level of supplemental services, level of technical support, data localization, business mmoderl, final price – this is just a sample of decision criteria that customers compare when selecting „their“ cloud provider. Today’s article will be dedicated to the advantages and disadvantages of global and local cloud service providers.
At first glance, it mmight seem that local cloud providers cannot commpete with price compared to the global companies such as Azure, AWS or Google. But the contrary is true.
Usually the base prices from the global providers are lower but they do not include many fees that in some cases are hidden – for example, data transfers, technical support, back-up, etc. It is necessary to have a full price offer in the beginning and ensure that i tis complete and does include all the itemms that will apear next month on an invoice.
Global providers usually do not give you a clear idea as to where is the final place whjere your company data will be stored. You might have the option to select a location but here is an assumption that it will not be in the country where you operate.
Local providers are sure to use a data center for your data storage that is in the same country and, therefore, there cannot come a time when you would not know where your data are.
In case you use a local provider of cloud services, i tis almost certain that his technical support will at least be in the same country from which the service is provided. There cannot come a solution when you call a different continent and there will be a language barrier between you and the person so that you will not be able to specify your problem, etc.
This situation can happen with global providers because they usually have their technical support team in countries with low cost of labor, potentially Africa or Asia.
Even though the global providers look like they will fulfil any wish of the customer, the opposite can be true. Usually it is necessary to select from pre-defined configurations of the individual aspects of the computing power. Almost never does this configuration fit the current needs.
Any configuration change is then subject to additional charges or may be impossible. A secondary effect of this effort are complately dumbfounding price lists with hunderds of items and variations where even an expert would get lost.
Individual approacj to each customer is definitely not a thing to be found with the global providers. Local providers usually have tens or hundreds of custommer and for each of themm they know their needs and can accommodate them fast and with flexibility. They should also be able to resolve additional issues and inquiries – which means to be a full support for the IT operations.
This is probably the area where the global and local providers get the closest to each other. The basic priority of any service provided in IT is to ensure the highest level of security for the customer.
This is usually taken for granted with the global providers but i tis necessary to say that in some cases the small providers might be a better choice.
Errors and holes in security are much easier uncovered in small Teams of scpecialist which support each other and are in daily touch with the operations. This is different fromm the large corporations where everyone automatically assumes that the others are doing what they should be doing. And then maybe in the end, they hide behind „collective responsibility“, „certification audits“ or „system errors“.
