It goes without saying that cloud computing services can make the things a lot easier for you; ironically, finding the right provider for the same can be noticeably difficult. However, there is nothing to worry about; you can find the right provider with utter ease if you know how to narrow down your search. Needless to say, you must not turn a blind eye, and should try your best to make an informed decision.

To begin with, you must look for a managed application run time. In other words, it should preferably be the responsibility of the service provider to monitor each and every component, and keep an eye out for vulnerabilities. Secondly, the chosen provider must make the necessary arrangements for application cloning, and allow you to clone the entire production environment, if required. Nevertheless, following are some of the other things that you must keep in mind when finding a suitable provider for cloud computing services:

Extensible configurations – By and large, the service provider would install or configure all the required components and packages; however, at times, you might need something which has not been already provided to you. In such a scenario, it is important that you extend the existing configuration management system by writing an appropriate recipe. For this purpose, you need to have extensible configurations; it goes without saying that their absence can cost you dearly.

Monitoring and alerting – Needless to say, getting a cloud application platform, and utilizing it to the fullest are not one and the same. To derive the maximum benefit out of the chosen platform, you need to be alerted every now and then; here, it is worth mentioning that any option which fails to so must be avoided at any cost. The right provider would leave no stone unturned to keep a tab on resource utilization, and alert you, as and when required. Believe it or not but timely alerts would let you know if you are in need of some additional capacity, thereby helping you plan the things accordingly.

Application templates – At times, you might need to reproduce the application capacity because of more reasons than one. Therefore, it is advisable to ensure that the chosen cloud application platform gives you access to some of the application templates which you can use for this purpose. By and large, these templates have the requisite information, and are stored in a configuration management system, but that’s another story.