Managed Services in the Cloud
We’ve talked about what to look for in purchasing SLAs based on your specific business needs, but why is having a managed services provider important to your business in the first place? As the adoption cycle continues to mature with cloud computing, more and more businesses are trying to understand the changes that will be needed to adapt properly to a cloud-hosted environment. For years companies at all levels have had to use on-premise hardware or sign up for co-location datacenter services, but now with the ability to utilize Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers within minutes, companies can expand their infrastructure footprint to the cloud with ease.
Being able to spin up servers when you want is a great business model, yet you will have to ask yourself, “Who is going to manage that infrastructure for you?” Co-location providers have been offering managed services for years, and customers enjoy the ability to call in when problems arise. Cloud computing providers are seeing this demand and are now developing managed service platforms to fill this need.
Transforming your business’ infrastructure should be seamless – having a managed service provider can help bridge that gap. Cloud managed services have the same look, feel, and flavors as typical managed service providers. Cloud managed services offers SLA’s, monitoring, patching, alerting, and even offers an on-demand ticketing system. Cloud managed services offer all the same services that are provided by co-location service providers but can do this with your ever-changing needs.
Managed services help reduce capital expenditure and allow customers to focus on their business and not their infrastructure. One of the grea benefits of cloud-managed services is the account management that comes with many offerings. By allowing your cloud managed service provider the ability to perform account management services, your business can be fully optimized with your IaaS provider within months. Account management teams can assist with fiscal budgeting, forecasting growth, and even help with optimized architecture and purchasing decisions to save money. From enterprise level companies to the brand new start-up, having a cloud managed services provider offers a level of service that is becoming mandatory to keep up and manage your cloud infrastructure.
By proactively managing your infrastructure in the cloud, you can minimize risk for your organization. Many managed service providers offer different levels of support. Do your research and find out which one matches your business needs. Important areas to understand are Account management, Forecasting, SLA requirements, response times, and the availability of on-site resources. 2nd Watch can do all of these things for you. To learn more, please visit our Managed Services page.
-Blake Diers, Sales Executive
