As organizations turn increasingly to the cloud to host more and more of their critical operations, solution providers should be prepared to meet their needs.

Of course, as more organizations head for the cloud, more service providers will crop up to help them, increasing competition to the max, and making it especially important for solution providers to be ready to answer their questions.

Citing a Goldman Sachs study published earlier this year, ITbusinessedge.com says spending on cloud computing infrastructure and platforms will grow at a 30 percent compound annual growth rate from 2013 through 2018. With that kind of market potential, companies are eager to get in on the action.

ITbusinessedge.com tapped Mike Kane, senior product marketing manager at Dyn, to pull together a list of tips to help businesses identify the best cloud provider. The list serves as a good guide for solution providers, too. It's a quick rundown of questions, concerns and best practices that you'll need to be ready for if you're going to win business and outlive the competition in the coming cloud stampede.

Click through to see the tips as they appeared in ITbusinessedge.com's original post.