Consideration while choosing a Cloud Service Provider (Infrastructure as a Service – Cloud based Virtual Data Centre)

Any organization while purchasing Cloud services especially, Infrastructure as a Service which is essentially Cloud based Virtual Data Centre should give due consideration to following points:
1. Ability to port and run existing Enterprise Applications ( possibly unchanged) in the cloud
2. Self service portal for functional users (not of applications but of cloud).
3. Configurability, visibility and control over virtual data centre
4. Import and Export of virtual images
5. Support for existing software licenses
6. Accommodation of appliances
7. Role based user access control
8. Policy Management, Cost control and charge back
9. Team collaboration and Workflow
10. SLAs
11. Compliance
12. Access to log and audit data
13. Physical security of data centre
14. Disaster recovery plan
15. Security of data and Intellectual Property (IP)
16. Support and Training
17. Documentation
18. References