4 Tips for Cloud Vendor Management

4 Tips for Cloud Vendor Management

January 27

As many organizations utilize the cloud for at least a portion of their infrastructure, cloud vendor management is an essential need.

In addition to building and maintaining the infrastructure that works best for the organization, many roles — such as infrastructure or cloud engineers  — are responsible for managing the cloud vendors the organization partners with.

Why Is Cloud Vendor Management Important? 

Cloud vendor management is a crucial need for organizations that are leveraging the cloud. This role often entails being responsible for a variety of facets, including: 

  • Continuous evaluation of cloud vendor services and their relation to the organization’s internal goals. 
  • Contracts, including service level agreements (SLAs). 
  • Scope, contract, and pricing negotiation. 
  • Risk mitigation and management.
  • Vendor relationships, including building relationships, managing them, and regularly communicating with vendors. 

While this list is in no way exhaustive, it does provide an overview of key parts of vendor management. With so many moving parts in this role, it’s important to create an efficient day-to-day strategy. 

How Can I Improve My Organization’s Cloud Vendor Management Strategies?

Here are four tips to successfully manage cloud vendors for your organization: 

1. Organization

One of the keys to effective cloud vendor management is organization. By establishing and recording processes, you can simplify and document the job for yourself and anyone else who may support this role. 

This will often include the organization of contracts or SLAs, tracked communication between your organization and vendors, and other important records. This benefits you in a number of ways, including preparation for budget allocation and contract renewals.

2. Consistent Evaluation

By maintaining a consistent evaluation schedule, you can ensure your organization is always tracking toward its vendor-related goals. In particular, it’s important to evaluate your financial and performance goals. To get started, here are some important questions to ask yourself: 

    • Do we have an evaluation process in place? If not, create one and assign specific tasks to people on your team. It’s important that everyone knows exactly what they are responsible for during this process. Even if you are completing all of the tasks alone, it’s important to document each one and create a timeline for yourself. 
    • Do we have specific KPIs to measure our results? If not, it’s important to create those and regularly track progress. By having a baseline and goals to achieve, you can more effectively evaluate how your cloud vendors play a role in your team and organization’s cloud goals.
    • Is there any unnecessary risk, cost, or other factor coming from our cloud vendors? If so, it’s important to evaluate that reason and vendor so you can begin crafting next steps for your business. 

By consistently evaluating your relationships with vendors, the progress you’re making, and other key components, you can ensure your business is continuing to leverage and partner with the right vendors. 

3. Relationship Management

Building and maintaining relationships with vendors is a core role of this position. Through positive relationships, you can create a trusting relationship that allows both you and the vendor to be successful.

Though there are many considerations to successful cloud vendor relationship management, one is still the most important: consistent and transparent communication. Through this, you’ll be able to ensure your goals are clear to the vendor, assess any problems, and continue in a well-managed relationship. 

If you’re not sure where to start, a cloud consulting partner can help optimize your cloud operation. 

4. Risk Reduction Processes 

Depending on the industry your organization is in, there may be a number of compliance requirements for you to meet for cloud security. It’s important to make sure that your organization and the vendors you partner with are following cloud and data security best practices

Not only do your vendors need to be familiar with these, but they need to understand how to implement them, as this compliance is crucial for your business operations. 

Improve Your Organization With the Right Tools and Vendors

While cloud vendor management may just be one part of your role, it’s crucial for that part of your business to perform well, as it ties into other areas, such as financial success, seamless connections, and effective applications. 

The right tools and vendors can help your organization meet — and exceed — these goals. You can help improve business outcomes by simplifying the deployment of workloads across your blended infrastructure using interconnection

Whether you’re searching for low latency, disaster recovery, secure connections, or another benefit, interconnections may be able to provide the answers you need. Learn more about how interconnection can help you advance your business today. 

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