Many executives know to carefully examine their strategies. If you are considering moving to the cloud, consider these important steps:

• Of course, keep your own backups of your data in case the cloud provider ever loses your data and they cannot restore your data.
• Establish your own business continuity plan. This plan, which you may practice implementing one or more times a year, is what to do if your cloud provider fails.
• Have your legal advisor help you with your contract such that the contract includes clauses for both a service level agreement and a quality of service. The former specifies how much of the time the provider will be up and running for you to use their services. The latter specifies how quickly the service will perform. You want a rapid response as opposed to applications that function so slowly that your user productivity suffers.

Handled correctly the cloud can be very helpful. In case you missed them, the past 3 blog entries discussed the benefits of, cautions for, and dangers of moving to the cloud. Click the links below to read each of those blog posts:

• Big benefits of using the cloud
• Be cautious about using the cloud
• Dangers of using the cloud

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