Pick a Cloud Provider, But Plan Your ExitPick a Cloud Provider, But Plan Your Exit

As important as it is to select the right cloud partner, so too is establishing an exit strategy should the relationship sour or otherwise need to end.

One of the beauties of using a cloud service is that the provider does everything it takes to deliver a seamless experience. If all goes as planned, everything meshes together nicely. But even if everything is working well, you still need a well-defined exit strategy.

When an enterprise commits to a particular cloud service, such as Microsoft Office 365, is needs to have considered a number of questions. These include: Are we purchasing the licensing from the provider directly or through a partner or other third party? Then, with these licensing arrangements, how easy or difficult is it to move the services from one provider to another? As anyone who has ever handed over their firm's licensing to a Microsoft or other partner knows, doing so is tantamount to turning over the keys to the proverbial kingdom. Getting them back may be a little challenging -- and inconvenient.

If you do find yourself in a difficult position, take note that regaining control of your Office 365 account may tax your patience but it's not impossible.

Jumping Through Security Hoops
Microsoft will require you to embed some text code into the domain or domains assigned to the 365 accounts. This is in part to prove domain ownership and for authentication. Next, you will need to provide notarized personal identification along with a letter stating why you want control of your account. Microsoft's legal department will review your documentation -- but watch for landmines your partner may have set.

If the partner you're working with has listed itself as both the global admin and the technical contact, then you'll need to point this out to Microsoft. In general, avoid using just one account for the owner, and the best practice is to list the owner as an admin account pointed to your company. For the technical contact, it's best to use an independent email address connected to the company.

Once you gain control of your account, you will have the ability to purchase licensing on your own behalf and to establish direct billing with Microsoft. Let me note that this is when you may discover that your "partner" has either paid Microsoft or has not -- and, if not, then expect to settle the bill or say goodbye to your data in those services. Short lesson: Don't give up control of your hosted accounts, and be sure to have accountability and proper controls in place for the benefit of your company.

While I use Microsoft in my example, this situation is not exclusive to it. I don't know how every hosting company operates, but I will state that this means you may need to exercise even greater caution in fully understanding what you do and do not have control over should the business relationship sour. You need to understand your SLA fully and know how to protect your data in anticipation of any damage control that might become necessary should your hosting partner take retaliatory actions upon termination of your business relationship. Do not put yourself in this position; over the years, I've seen customers place vendors and partners in positions of trust only to realize that they ought not to have done so when they try to tighten or take back control.

Hosted services require thought given to key areas of concern: span of control (who manages what); data retrieval and protection; and moving from one provider to another or from one provider to in-house. In other words, do you have an exit strategy?

Exit to Your Left
Customers leave vendor relationships for many reasons: cost, applicability of the solution, organizational maturity, poor support, or because they simply don't mesh well. I see the long-term challenge for hosted services as being hard on OPEX. By that, I mean companies' OPEX may be predictable, but it is a hard cost, and when evaluated, companies need to ask whether cost outweighs the reward.

Each company must consider its own situation when evaluating the risk of providing voice or any other application on premises. In the past, the tendency in IT had been to take on too much to be effective -- hence why so many IT projects fail. As always, the boardroom question is: "Why do we want to be the phone company?" and the responses were typically, "because we can do it cheaper and have more control."

IT should be able to hone in on the opportunities that it is best at delivering while weighing what it needs to outsource or relegate to cloud providers. If you decide on the latter, just make sure you have an exit strategy because things always change.

Whatever you do, do one thing right and then move on to do the next thing right. That sounds simple but in reality the execution fails so often that it puts a negative spin on IT. Another lesson is taking on what you can and then doing it really well or turning it over by way of outsourcing, using cloud services, or a third party when it's a better fit.