How do I know I can trust your cloud?

Everyone out there is a cloud today – you have cloud apps, cloud servers, cloud services, cloud anything. This is all well and good for consumers where a couple of dollars are at risk, but what about Enterprises? When an enterprise moves to a cloud, it is a game changing and potentially critical event. If the cloud fails, people can lose jobs, customers lose trust in the enterprise, and the company could go under.

So if my company is on the line, how do I know if I can trust your cloud? Can you guarantee the availability and redundancy I require? Will you be reponsive to my needs? Will I be aware of the changes (big and small) that you make that will effect my environment? And, if you fail to meet these needs, will you compensate me for lost revenue?

A keynote at EMCWorld discussed this idea of how to establish trust with cloud provders. In the finance realm, auditors come in to review financials and controls, so why not for the cloud world? RSA released a service known as the Cloud Trust Authority (http://www.rsa.com/node.aspx?id=3861). Instead of doing your own research on who to trust and how much to trust them, RSA is creating a scorecard for cloud providers that can be shared wiht potential customers similarly to how financial audits are shared. This allows customers to compare scorecards of providers to determine at a glance who to trust, and who needs more work.