When acquiring cloud related services, cloud service consumers may need to assess their own business need as well as the service offerings and capabilities of cloud service providers. This is where the cloud service assessment tools become useful. There are a number of cloud service assessment tools available in the market that target cloud service consumers and/or cloud service providers on their respective needs and service offerings. These tools are designed with considerations of various relevant aspects of cloud services and are readily adoptable.
Cloud service assessment tools are tools aiming to help cloud service stakeholders to conduct assessments on cloud services based on pre-defined criteria. In general, using these cloud service assessment tools does not require independent assessment by a trusted third-party.
There are different types of cloud service assessment tools for different stakeholders.
Assessment Tools | For | Organisation | Description | |
1 | Cloud Assessment Tool (CAT) | Consumer & Provider | Asia Cloud Computing Association | The aim of Cloud Assessment Tool is to let consumers assess the operational, performance and other critical capabilities offered by cloud providers against their own requirements. Cloud Assessment Tool's framework consists of a matrix of parameters classified into different levels, including key operational criteria; parameters for the individual criterion; performance levels; and matrices that map operational parameter values to the operational criteria. |
2 | Cloud Security Assessment | Consumer | Qualys | Qualys Cloud Security Assessment allows consumers to continuously monitor the assets and resources of the cloud against regulations, standards and best practice of industry. Vulnerabilities raised by misconfigurations and non‐standard deployment are assessed and analysed by the assessment tool to spot the risks. It helps consumers prioritisethe risks discovered and accommodate with remediation methods. |