The most mature providers of cloud services in Russia the Research of TAdviser

In a situation of transition to digital economy the cloud already became the basic requirement to the transformed infrastructure. The main factor of success in digital business models – fast reaction to changes, and cloud resources provide to business the necessary level of flexibility and scaling here. As note in Linxdatacenter, business aims to get all strategic advantages of cloud solutions: failure from the compound systems from components of different vendors, including from the legacy equipment, centralized operation by information resources, convenient and operational scaling and also creation of the effective environment for development and testing.

The market created strong interest in the public clouds acting as an insurance on a case of failure of local "iron" or a private cloud, - Andrey Zakharov, the director of products and innovations of Linxdatacenter notes. - The main characteristic of this process – the leading role of infrastructure services IaaS as the vast majority of customers aim to raise using these services otkazo-and disaster tolerance. So, nearly 50% of customers use public clouds for removal of peak loads from the main IT system. Within this trend also demand for services of connectivity with resources of global providers of cloud resources - Google, Azure, IBM Cloud, AWS grows.

As Anton Nagov comments, the head of business development, department of cloud computing of Softline group, many large global vendors already suggested to use the software on a subscription - it helps to create a habit to new consumption patterns of IT, times of purchases of licenses "for emergency" passed.

Cost efficiency – a possibility of cost optimization due to transition to service model remains the main driver of migration in a cloud. In structure of cloud consumption in Russia the demand of IaaS continues to amplify. Lease of computing powers allows large business to solve problems of scalability of resources and cost reallocation from CAPEX in OPEX. In the cloud scenario the customer does not need to buy the expensive computing equipment, at the same time he wants to receive easily unrolled and managed service with the high level of security.

Transfer of costs from category capital to operating rooms – one of the significant reasons of use of a cloud, but not only. Users of cloud services also note fast start of the project (in our case it can take up to 10 minutes after the address) and also existence of high-performance computing resources and the duplicative platform – solutions of the enterprise level which even the small companies can use, - Maxim Berezin, the director of business development of CROC tells Cloud services.

Selection criteria

When choosing the supplier of cloud services the Russian customers often compare technical parameters of platforms based on which the cloud is developed – including, the number of telecom operators, connection of fast networks, etc. In general in Softline select two main groups of cloud offers in the market.

The first are offers on the minimum price where to please costs are sacrificed practically all elements of fault tolerance, - Anton Nagov considers. - Cheaper equipment without service contacts from vendors is used, in the state people work with minimum sufficient qualification, and solutions do not differ in functionality and stability. The second category is the providers who are guided by quality of the provided services which use the checked vendor solutions guaranteeing stability of work of infrastructure. All equipment is on service support, there is a reservation of the equipment on a case of failures. The cloud is supported by a team of the engineers who are regularly undergoing advanced training.

In addition to infrastructure base, employee competences of provider are important for continuous work, - Andrey Zakharov confirms. - Ideally for maintenance of continuity of business processes the principle of "single window" should be implemented. Modern cloud solutions close the most part of tasks of ensuring business continuity: allow to implement tasks of backup and disaster recovery of data and applications, management of IT systems of the company, monitoring of incidents and risks assessment in the field of IT.

Mature controllability

The controllability provides to the customer the maximum return from a cloud, allowing it to regulate quickly set and volume of the consumed cloud services. Important advantage of virtual infrastructure is the possibility of independent management – so that the customer could reconfigure in the greater or lower side quickly, in several clicks, without need to address provider. Demand for control automation grows at a cloud today as it is global, and in the Russian market.

Most of clients really independently manage infrastructure, using the widespread automation equipment available to work from a cloud. They turn on, including, the tool most popular at the moment – the Terraform utility. There are also companies which ask for the help in deployment of virtual environments. We advise such customers, or completely we undertake work on creation and change of configurations of virtual machines. We perform these services in the managed services format, - Maxim Berezin adds.

In addition to requirements to convenience, requirements of the Russian customers to reliability, fault tolerance and security of cloud services continue to raise. To large business and the state organizations observance of SLA and existence of guarantees of continuity of service from provider is important.

SLA as a component of the service agreement which we sign with clients, is urged to protect customers – not only parameters of provision of services contain here, but also penalties against provider in case of long unavailability of cloud services are fixed, - Maxim Berezin explains. - We undertake to pay in the most complex cases of compensation in the amount of 100% of the cost of cloud services in a month.

Level of a maturity and reliability of provider in the opinion of the customer confirm certifications, first of all about compliance to requirements 152-FZ and 242-FZ, closing the questions connected with storage and personal data processing. Besides, the maturity of processes regarding information security confirms the certificate of ISO27001.

Technique of rating of Top-10 of providers of a cloud

Taking into account the designated business priorities when choosing the platform for receiving cloud services, by preparation of rating of TAdviser such parameters as controllability, security and availability of services of DPC were estimated. Several criteria for comparison were selected: automation, garantiruyemost of service, performance, security.

Within criteria the SLA parameters, presence of certifications at platforms, ensuring control automation, enhanced capabilities for performance improvement, the used technological solutions, etc. were estimated, in particular.

The summary point treated proceeding from assessment of each parameter on the basis of the data provided by providers.

Top-10 the most mature providers of cloud services

Source: TAdviser, 2018

Comparative assessment of level of a maturity of the offer of cloud services

Source: TAdviser, 2018

* - Assessment is changed on the basis of the data provided in addition.

** - Data are provided after the publication of the report.

*** - AutoMate, own development. Data are provided after the publication of the report.

**** - Communication between DPCs of Cloud4Y more 80Gb. The updated data are provided after the publication of the report.