CSPs offer a variety of services, but typically they fall under three types of cloud service providers:

IaaS providers

IaaS solutions provide access to IT infrastructure components that you would normally have in your data center, eliminating the need to procure, configure, or manage your own. This includes resources like compute, networks, storage, data management, virtualization, and operating systems. While the IaaS model increases flexibility, lowers costs, and speeds up times to market, customers are still responsible for managing and maintaining their own applications and responding to issues.

PaaS providers

PaaS solutions build off IaaS, providing tools and services to create and deploy applications. PaaS incorporates operating systems, middleware, and runtime environments into the application stack and also manages any hardware or other assets related to the underlying infrastructure.

SaaS providers 

SaaS solutions are perhaps the most familiar and make up the fastest growing services in the cloud market. CSPs deliver ready-to-use applications and are responsible for maintaining and managing everything, from hardware and maintenance to development, scaling, and delivery. For example, you probably use many of the SaaS productivity applications in Google Workspace every day, such as Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Drive.

While these are the most common categories, they do not fully describe all of the types of services currently offered by CSPs. Many top cloud service providers are continuously developing new cloud-based services around emerging technologies like containerization, edge computing, machine learning, and Kubernetes.

Types of cloud service providers can also be categorized based on whether they deliver services via public cloud infrastructure or use private, hybrid, or multicloud deployment models.

Cloud service provider examplesThe CSP market includes cloud providers of all shapes and sizes. The big three—Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS)—are considered the established leaders. However, there are a host of other smaller or niche players that offer cloud services as well, including IBM, Alibaba, Oracle, Red Hat, DigitalOcean, and Rackspace. Increasingly, companies are choosing to mix and match cloud services from different CSPs for different requirements rather than choosing one provider for everything. In most cases, choosing to work with multiple cloud providers helps businesses select the best cloud capabilities for their unique use cases. For instance, different providers may specialize in certain areas like data analytics and AI services or offer better support for legacy environments or broader compute options. CSPs that follow an open approach to the cloud give their customers the freedom to combine the services and providers that best fit their needs, allowing them to move workloads to and from on-premises and between cloud providers at any time.

Benefits of using a cloud service provider

Here are some of the key things for organizations to consider:

• Complex contracts: You will need to negotiate contracts and SLAs with each cloud provider you use. Multiple providers and vendors can lead to complex SLA relationships with different parameters and guaranteed service expectations.

• Vendor lock-in: Some cloud providers do not integrate well with competitor products and services. Becoming too dependent on a single provider can make it difficult to migrate data and workloads to another technology stack without incurring high costs, incompatibilities, or even legal constraints.

• Security responsibility: CSPs follow a shared responsibility model, which means cloud security is implemented by both the cloud provider and the customer. Poor understanding of a provider’s responsibilities and your own can lead to substantial security risks or security breaches.

Along with these specific concerns when working with cloud service providers, your organization will also need to have a solid cloud migration strategy in place and be ready to tackle new complexity when it comes to monitoring and managing cloud environments.

Cloud adoption is rarely a straightforward, one-size-fits-all journey. Choosing the right provider or providers, will depend on your unique needs and technology requirements.

Below is a list of some of the key factors to consider when evaluating cloud service providers:

While it shouldn’t be the only reason for choosing a cloud provider, cost is often one of the primary factors in making a decision. It’s helpful to think about both the direct costs of service usage (upfront and pay-as-go) and any indirect costs, such as hiring talent or retiring on-premises systems.

Beyond the cloud products and services available, you should assess how well a CSP can help you meet your current and future IT needs. It’s helpful to consider how easy it is for you to manage and deploy services and what integration is available for existing business-critical applications. Other important considerations include whether they use standard interfaces and APIs, event and change management, and support for hybrid and multicloud models.

Trust in your cloud service provider is a prerequisite for a successful relationship. You should make an honest assessment of what you really need from a CSP and consider whether a provider can meet those expectations. For instance, does the CSP have a good market reputation? What level of cloud experience and technical knowledge do they have? Are they financially stable? And will they be able to provide the support and guidance you need to reach your goals?

Increasingly, proprietary solutions do not suit the technical requirements of modern business. You should evaluate cloud service providers on how “open” they are. For example, look at whether you have options to build, migrate, and deploy your applications across multiple environments, both in the cloud or on-premises. A top cloud service provider should leverage open source technologies and interoperable solutions that ensure consistency and effective management wherever your workloads may be.

Finally, you should consider the security practices of a cloud provider. Your CSP must demonstrate that they can keep your business and customer data safe. This includes evaluating everything from security infrastructure to security policies and identity management to data backup and retention. It’s also essential to find out what controls exist to ensure the physical security of their data center, such as environmental safeguards, disaster recovery, and documented business continuity plans.