Are Cloud Managed Services Right for your Business?

Managed cloud services refers to?outsourcing daily IT management for?cloud-based services and technical support to automate and enhance your business operations.

Often, internal IT departments don’t possess the skills to effectively monitor and maintain a cloud environment. In these situations, a company hires a third-party cloud managed services provider to manage cloud security, computing, storage, network operations, application stacks, vendors, and more.

Depending on your IT needs, cloud MSPs can also handle?monitoring and?reporting, performance testing, backup and recovery and more. With fixed monthly pricing, hiring a cloud-managed services provider is often less expensive than an in-house team.

So, what are the benefits of hiring cloud-managed services? Let us look at some of the reasons why using a cloud-managed service is important than ever today:

1. Flat, Predictable Spending

Managed services for cloud offer flexibility in the sense that you can choose a certain support tier and ramp up or down depending on your requirements. This helps maintain a consistent monthly bill, leading to predictable spending and accurate budgets.

Even if your needs fluctuate throughout the year, your cloud service provider can work with you to develop a customized plan that suits your needs.?

For example, if you’re an audit and assurance company it’s likely that most of your business is conducted during tax season. Hence, your managed services and cloud support needs will peak during the first quarter and gradually whittle down later in the year.

Flat, predictable pricing gives you flexibility and peace of mind knowing that you can access these services whenever you need them, at no extra cost.

2. Avoid High Infrastructure Costs

Outsourced managed services allow businesses to leverage robust network infrastructure without the need to purchase expensive capital assets themselves. Cloud managed service providers set up and maintain your network and take full ownership over things like a cloud migration plan, hardware assets, and staff training.?

That saves you from having to decide between AWS or Azure, determining how to manage the transition, and writing multiple checks in the process.

3. Free In-house Developers & IT Staff for Critical Projects

Managed cloud services operate around the clock, so it’s likely that your in-house team won’t be required for cloud-specific tasks such as troubleshooting slow connections or system outages.?

Hence your software engineers and other IT personnel can concentrate on long-term IT strategy and other projects that drive the sales needle.?

4. Future-Proof Your Cloud Deployment

Migrating to cloud platforms is the first step in future-proofing your data center as it involves onboarding the latest technologies and services.?

On-prem servers can be costly to maintain and run the risk of catastrophic failure in the case of a disaster. Cloud computing helps minimize these risks and can serve as an effective disaster recovery strategy, too.?

5. Compliance Support

If you’re a healthcare provider, online retailer, financial institution, or another company subject to industry regulation, non-compliance to privacy and security regulations can land you in serious trouble.?Working with a cloud managed service provider can help you remain compliant with regulations like?HIPPABusinesses of all sizes are being targeted by cybercriminals everyday. But when you work with a cloud managed services provider, they take ownership over mitigating and responding to cyberattacks.?

Plus most top-tier cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure incorporate best in-class cybersecurity protection so that’s an additional layer of security. Therefore, you can breathe easier when it comes to safeguarding and protecting your proprietary data.

7. Quickly Fill Gaps in Expertise

Whether you’re dealing with a private cloud, public cloud, or hybrid cloud, your internal teams may not have all the skills required to efficiently run cloud services. With cloud managed services, you can enjoy the support of a dedicated team of IT professionals 24/7. This is a quick way to fill skill gaps and make informed decisions about your infrastructure, rather than relying on guesswork.

8. Disaster Recovery Support

On-premise servers are expensive, unwieldy, and require complex recovery plans if disaster strikes. On the other hand, managed cloud services ensure that your data is safe and secure across all applications and services. In case of any disaster, your business will continue running with minimal downtime.?

If a hosting server fails, then another can step in to take its place instantaneously. Cloud managed service providers can automatically control failover between hardware hosts and resource balancing at the virtualization level.

9. Faster Response Times

Cloud managed services can deliver efficient response times across all monitoring levels. Most cloud service providers have the expertise to access, monitor, and repair network issues within minimal timelines. So your business can expect quick response times through remote cloud services and enterprise-level monitoring.

10. Cut Time to Market

By enabling organizations to better manage their IT infrastructures, cloud managed services can save costs and shorten time to market and improve various service levels. Adopting cloud managed services is a massive enabler of standardization and automation.

11. One Stop Shop

Managed services providers offer a turnkey solution for the entire gamut of your cloud computing needs. Hence, you most likely will only deal with one vendor with one invoice. If you were to manage the cloud migration project in-house, it’s likely that you would have to deal with several different organizations leading to frustration and cost overruns.?