Choosing a cloud provider: Is bigger always better?

Expert panel debates the important factors when deciding to go with AWS, Azure or CGP or a local or specialised provider

When choosing a cloud services provider (CSP) should you go with a hyperscaler like AWS, Azure or GCP or select a smaller CSP or a hosting provider instead? That question was tackled by a panel of experts at the Computing Cloud & Infrastructure Live summit last week.

The general consensus was that it makes more sense to go with a large cloud firm.

Manuj Sarpal, CTO at GraniteShares, was of the opinion that small players carry too much risk.

"I believe there will be three big cloud providers out there and the big fish are going to eat the smaller fish, economies of scale will play a vital role," he said. "So rather than focusing on a small provider, which at some point of time will get eaten, choose one of the big providers."

Sarpal added that his firm currently deployed Azure, but had previously used a smaller CSP which ended up getting swallowed by AWS. Of course, AWS had wanted GraniteShares to remain a customer, but to do so would have meant learning many new AWS tools and APIs, something Sarpal described as a steep learning curve.

"Think about that when you make your strategy because you don't want to have to retrain again in three or four years' time," he said.

Nick Ioannou, head of IT at Ratcliffe Groves Partnership, concurred.

"I've nearly chosen providers who have gone bust. There was a data centre that went completely belly up, and the letter everyone received on how much they have to pay to continue accessing their own data was horrendous. With Azure one thing you know is it's not going to go bust."

Ioannou also touched on the issue of the long-term viability of small cloud providers: "The features that you originally signed up for may suddenly disappear with a new owner. So the long-term strategy is important."

The availability of skills is an important factor when formulating such strategies, said Tony Crewdson-Kennedy, interim CIO at the Royal College of Physicians.

"Look at the support that's available for each platform," he advised. "If you're going for one of the bigger, more popular platforms, there are a lot more people out there with the skillset for that platform. And because there are more of them, you can essentially get them cheaper. You can substantially reduce the cost of support."

However, Adam Nash, EMEA technical sales manager at LogicMonitor, insisted that alternatives to the big three shouldn't be overlooked, particularly where large data volumes are involved.

"If you've got a large migration project and you're moving it to the public cloud it is probably going to be more expensive than choosing a local cloud provider or a data centre host. That will probably provide a more economical solution, and it's going to be based on a standardised stack, probably VMware. So, in terms of learning the technology, it will probably be pretty straightforward."