YOURasp CTO gives top cloud tips

Being flexible and looking at a variety of options is important for CIOs looking to move their data to the cloud.

Alex Liffers, CTO of YOURasp, a locally based cloud provider, spoke to CIO about the top things CTOs and CIOs need to know about moving to the cloud.

Be flexible “CTOs are technology driven. They generally go to a cloud service thinking about the project and the service. They start talking about the product themselves rather than business requirements.”

Look around “Make sure you look around for a provider. You get what you pay for. So many people host cloud services, but even a Microsoft server fell down on the weekend.”

Privacy and data retention “Data retention is important to look at. We do some work for the WA electoral commission and when an election comes around, we aren’t able to store the electoral role in an offshore database. There are definite rules around that that need to be taken into consideration.”

Think about the product “CTOs are technology driven. They generally go to a cloud service thinking about the project and the service. They start talking about the product themselves rather than business requirements.”

Learn to let go “A lot of IT managers initially don’t want to let go of the technology. Tinker with in-house vertical applications that are specific to your business. The business processes have to be around how you manage your properties or how you manage your medical records depending on your industry. Whatever you outsource to the cloud, let the cloud provider deal with it.”

YOURasp this week became the first Australian cloud service provider to deploy a MailMarshal SPE 3.0 solution.