Nowadays, many IT specialists swear by the cloud. Insisting – and rightfully so, if you care about my opinion – that moving their company’s infrastructure there, has had a huge – positive – impact on their business evolution. With a Managed Service Provider or sans one.
Why, you ask? Let me give you a few reasons — just the basics.
On the cloud, not only is your data more secure, but also accessible from almost anywhere on the globe. Provided that you are connected to the Internet. Managing your cloud based resources can be considerably more convenient as well – for example, your cloud servers can easily be upgraded, cloned, restored or backed up with just a couple of mouse clicks, in mere minutes. Yes, long gone are the days of screwdrivers, failing scripts, bad sectors and cable hell.
However, migrating your IT infrastructure to the cloud and keeping all those systems up and optimally running, can become a challenge. Even for the most seasoned IT Administrators and computer geeks. Especially, if your organization uses legacy or custom software. The same goes if your company has many employees and partners, each with their own specific needs.
Why hire a Managed Service Provider
Someone could argue that a company should train their existing IT crew, so they can complete such tasks on their own. This, though, could take time, cause needless stress to everyone involved and cost valuable resources.
Having worked as an IT Administrator, I can tell you this: Your people should be spending their workday on innovating and improving your product line. Not micromanaging a dozen different platforms and burning off valuable time trying to keep up with constantly evolving technologies — just think of all these lines of bash code, passwords and user interfaces and you will probably get the idea. Having to do all this, actually kills the point of migrating your infrastructure to the cloud — don’t you agree?
That’s where cloud Managed Service Providers come in. Before we get into specifics, think focus and specialization. By outsourcing the bulk work of your cloud infrastructure to a specialized provider, you make your IT teams more efficient. That goes to say, you allow them to focus on necessary tasks alone.
Plan before you act
If you are determined to move your IT infrastructure to a cloud based platform, you’d better keep your foot away from the accelerator pedal. Plan carefully before you act – we are talking about your data and business technological backbone after all. Shortcuts should be avoided. The potential dangers of data loss or service downtime aren’t the only things you should consider here. Your employees and clients will also have to go through a training process. That’s in order to get familiarized with your new cloud systems. And that will probably take a while. Especially if no one is there to teach them in a fast and effective way.
Managed Service Providers can help you get past these issues faster, by following the best practices in the industry: Making sure that your data is safely backed up and migrated, providing you with training and support, and helping you plan your future on the cloud. Let alone adding to your reliability.
Your needs come first
It doesn’t matter if your company is a recently found startup or a large organization with hundreds of employees. Managed Service Providers can tailor their solutions to your needs. As they often utilize more than one cloud providers — like Amazon, Microsoft, or Google — they can help you choose the best platforms for your enterprise. Which, in turn, will allow you to get the most out of all their services. Thus substantially contributing to the continuous success of your business.
Of course, nothing can be considered fixed on our constantly morphing technological era. As your business grows, your Managed Service Provider can help you adjust the size and capabilities of your cloud infrastructure accordingly. That’s so it can be scaled to your exact present circumstances.
Keep everything in one place
There’s one more reason why hiring a Managed Service Provider can boost your business efficiency: Infrastructure centralization. In the modern IT world, even seemingly simple tasks can become burdensome for your local IT team. Tasks like moving a web domain to a different registrar. Or transferring a website to a new server. Or migrating email services.
If, however, all of the cloud services you utilize are managed by a specific, specialized provider, technical challenges and problems like those aforementioned can be quickly dealt with. That is, without the need to contact every cloud provider individually. A Managed Service Provider has the expertise and tools to automate many iterative tasks, so not only can they be completed faster, but also more securely as well.
In Stackmasters, we firmly believe that cloud computing is the future. But we also understand the challenges such a move can bring up for a business. Want to know more? For starters, you can check out our 3-step guide to moving to the cloud. Reach out to us! We can further discuss your individual situation, and devise the best solution for your needs.