The Credit Card Did It! [alternative title: Cloud Service Disruptions? Blame the Credit Card!]

Credit cards are the lynch pin of the Cloud. Cloud services generally are tied to a credit card for payments, nobody does invoices anymore. If the vendor cannot process a payment, the cloud service they provide gets suspended and might cause a disruption in service (meaning things aren't working). So like everything else an organization needs to plan, plan, test, test and test some more.

What happens if the credit card that's tied to the cloud services account expires and no one within the company remembers to modify the account to use a current credit card? If this happens there is the possibility of a service disruption.

What happens when the credit card is good, but because of security protocols put in place by the credit card company they stop accepting payment requests from a certain vendor because they've seen too many of the same charges or same amount charged from a certain vendor (don't laugh, this happens more than you know).

What happens when the cloud vendor only allows a customer to tie one (1) credit card to an account? Why not have a backup credit card tied to that cloud account? Who would have imagined that you'd need a backup credit card for to cloud services.

Availability is a primary selling point of the Cloud. Make sure that the way your organization pays for the Cloud has backup.


Rob