In one of my previous articles, How To Choose Your Cloud Provider, I was mentioning how important flexibility is when choosing a cloud provider. I believe this is important because I know many people ask whether the cloud software will be tailored to my company's needs and practices, or will it be tailored based on how other hundreds/thousands of customers want it. And the short answer is that it can and should be customized to fit your needs.

Of course, the major public cloud providers will have various pricing plans offering standard services based on what they think most businesses want. At present the market is dominated by cloud-based SaaS applications like Google Apps and Zoho, which are open to anybody who pays for them, and they offer a low level of customization.

But many cloud providers offer tailor-made, as opposed to ready-made, cloud services. In a previous article, "How is the Software Outsourcing Industry Embracing the Cloud?", I commented that one industry trend is custom cloud computing services, and I believe businesses should take advantage of these services.

These are a few key issues to think about:

• The service must allow you the freedom to customize the applications to best respond to your business requirements.
• It has to let you create the interface which manages the virtualized servers according to your needs.
• You need to be able to add and drop managed services as they are needed.
• And of course, we cannot forget about scalability and utility pricing, you should never pay for a service you don’t use.

Cloud solutions can be designed and built for you. They should provide the very best matched available facilities, equipment, and applications so that the solution comes precisely to the level of service you require. And you may be surprised at how affordable it can be.