The Cloud Industry Forum (CIF), the industry body whose aim is to raise standards and improve transparency in the cloud sector, has announced its support for Behind Every Cloud’s Clover Index as the benchmarking standard for comparison of Private and Hybrid Cloud Service Providers (CSP) in the UK's Regulated Markets.
Behind Every Cloud, which provides clarity, choice and control in the rapidly evolving IT cloud services market, has launched the SaaS platform to enable users to enter their requirements on deployment size, location of data and services needed and in return receive a list of profiles for very carefully analysed providers that can meet their requirements.
The Clover index is the only benchmarking standard to have achieved support and partnership from CIF. It has been launched to define and measure CSPs against a set of standard quantitative, unbiased, independent, best-practice cloud assessment criteria defined in consultation with CSP's, investors, regulatory advisors and senior members of the buying community.
Alex Hilton, CEO of the Cloud Industry Forum said: “The Cloud Industry Forum fully supports the market requirement for the Clover Index and believes it to be the benchmarking gold-standard for comparison of Cloud Providers who wish to align with the requirements of mid-sized firms in the UK’s regulated markets.
“Rather than mandating standards, the Cloud Industry Forum has always believed that the market will adapt to customer demands and CSP capabilities and the challenge has been matching the two. CIF believes the Clover Index is a great solution for this and will offer alignment between customers and vendors in the UK’s Regulated Markets.”
As a result of the partnership, access to the Clover Index will be provided as a free of charge value added service to existing and new CIF Professional Members.
Ray Bricknell, Managing Director at Behind Every Cloud, said: “In 2010, we set out to develop a cost effective, high quality, high speed system that provides objective, quantitative comparison of Private Cloud Service Provider offerings against the requirements of our mid-sized UK Finance Sector clients. These included IT best practice, regulatory compliance and our clients’ own unique needs. Endorsement by CIF is a major step toward our goal of ubiquitous market acceptance of the Clover Index as the UK benchmarking standard for Private and Hybrid Cloud.”
The web-based graphical user interface to the Clover Index data makes the process of shortlisting five to ten “pre-qualified as suitable” providers against a client’s needs exceptionally fast, and participating in the ecosystem is FREE to CSP’s, end clients and their consulting partners. Clients can interactively compare the high-level attributes of the recommended vendors against their own needs before moving forward to a shortlist.
