Kicking off managed cloud services channelizes the management of cloud infrastructure optimally. Through insightful strategies, it’s suggestable to ascend your cloud infra with a managed cloud services provider (referred to as MCSP) to handle migration, maintenance, and optimization of resources partially or totally.
The inclusive cloud environments – public, private, or hybrid necessitate the on-demand skill sets and expertise to operate these environments based on the business requirements and goals of cloud-based platforms. This is where customers dive deeply to move their head-banging cloud management to a managed cloud services provider who can:
- Optimize the cloud costs depending on the resource utilization and business needs.
- Setup the configurations and features for applications that depend on cloud portfolio.
- Manage and mitigate risks at a faster rate while ensuring less or zero downtime while migrating or maintaining any of the cloud environments.
- Easily integrate with required platforms, tools, or technologies for running applications seamlessly.
- Make the cloud environment intuitive therefore minimizing the learning curve, promoting simple adoption to the clients.
- Comply with regulations for the specific geographies or industries that are highly regulated.
- Implement high-security measures at an enterprise level, building impressive networks to access data with proper authentication and authorization.
Above all these, the primary task for any enterprise is to evaluate the talent pool needed – be it outsourcing or in-house teams, to manage their cloud environment. If you’re looking after a professional managed cloud service provider (MCSP), then there must be promising and convincing aspects to bet on.
Potentials to Scout for When looking for a Managed Cloud Services Provider
Cost Savings
When enterprises tap into the potential of a managed cloud services provider, they save significant costs in the long run. An MCSP helps the organizations to reduce operational or capital expenses involved while maintaining the cloud network infrastructure. Another underlying challenge is the process of recruiting and training the right expert which indeed involves costs. As the cloud infra seems to be complex, it’s advisable to outsource to enable business continuity, migrating the focus towards core competencies, fostering greater efficiency and ROI.
Rapid Issue Identification and Resolution
Follow-the-sun model is a core practice of any MCSP. A 24/7 support around the globe to address any network issues that customers might face triggers the available experts to identify and resolve issues rapidly.
Automation of Upgrades
Cloud environments have endless upgrades and updates frequently. Before organizational networks go obsolete, continuous optimization of resources is crucial. This is where an MCSP roles comes in. An MCSP handles these cloud environment upgrades, advancing the enterprises and their customers’ cloud infrastructure and networks as well.
Securing the Network Infra
Building cloud security is a head-straining task for organizations. It demands high-level of skills which aren’t available on-time. As MCSP’s leverage your cloud environment with their cloud security services, showcasing their knowledge and necessary resources to secure the networks against unauthorized access.
Building a Reliable Infrastructure
Having the required knowledge and experience to build, deploy, and maintain cloud infrastructure, organizations that opt MCSPs can be assured of the reliability and durability of their cloud network infrastructure.
Cloud Services Integration
Managed cloud services provider allows the enterprises for seamless integration of cloud resources – from applications to tools and technologies to the existing infrastructure in addition to enabling accessibility to these cloud resources.
Disaster Recovery
Unforeseen risks and disasters compromise the business continuity. Enterprises must have a Disaster Recovery (DR) and Backup plans to secure their data and recover it as soon as possible.
Aspects to Consider When Partnering with a Managed Cloud Services Provider
Before evaluating the pros and cons of a provider, enterprises must evaluate and decide on the type of clouds they’re going to use. Though many enterprises are using multi-clouds, there’ll be one cloud where they carry their core operations. So, a managed cloud services provider must have expertise in at least one cloud and it’s great if their expertise is into all the cloud platforms. On the other hand, they must provide services related to other clouds as well. This is the first aspect to keep in mind if you’ve decided to go for a MCSP.
The second stage of evaluating MCSP deals with aligning with your business goals. As an enterprise, you must have the confidence to bet on how they are going to meet your requirements and trusting their processes and being confident are the key drivers.
Now, it’s time for understanding the provider’s cloud service level agreements (SLAs) as they’re complex to get knowledge on. A trusted MCSP must give you in-depth details about their SLAs so that everything is aligned smoothly. Having a legal team to review these SLAs within your enterprise is a great option. This shows the uptime the company can expect for the chosen cloud services as well as the duration of support and time that teams take to resolve issues and customer complaints.
Diving into a little deeper understanding about their security standards and if any security breaches have happened previously builds confidence to avail these services. As managed cloud services go beyond offering a cloud solution, one needs to understand a managed cloud services provider end-to-end portfolio.
The final thing to consider is driving organizations in implementing FinOps culture. FinOps highly optimizes cloud costs among enterprises, the best practices of FinOps embedded with a potential cloud solution save you from additional expenses and bring visibility across your cloud environment. A managed cloud services provider must ensure that they stick to the best of FinOps platform thereby accelerating the maximum cloud potential.
Pitfalls That Most Enterprises Encounter with an MCSP
In my experience and what I have encountered mostly, it’s more about looking at cons more than pros as these can have an adverse effect on your business. These include:
- Your data, systems, and infrastructure maintenance go into the hands of a third party. This can make you prone to vulnerabilities into their systems if their attack surfaces are high. So before choosing an MCSP, it’s highly recommended to verify security protocols as well as accountability to take care of your enterprises’ privacy and security protocols.
- Regulation constraints are always consent to geographies or locations you’re operating from. Opt an MCSP who can offer cloud managed services to your location while complying with regulations.
- A few companies believe that their cost concerns may drop to some extent but it’s not always the same side of a toss. Depending on the complexity of existing systems and level of services needed, infrastructural costs may go up. And if budget planning is not aligned, then the MCSPs take advantage of you.
- There are thousands of third parties who offer managed cloud services. But how do you evaluate whether they are credible, trustworthy, and hold the right expertise to rely completely on? Here, you must look for how they have placed themselves, catering their expertise in the right ways to handle end-to-end cloud managed services.
INFOLOB, a Right MCSP to Handle Your Cloud Infra
Being a most reliable managed cloud services provider partner for more than 200+ global clients, INFOLOB owns the Oracle Cloud game with more than a decade experience. Also, we have delivered returns on enterprises’ cloud investments on a significant scale.
Our off-shore, onshore, and near-shore cloud managed services help the enterprises to optimally utilize single or multi-cloud infrastructure ensuring cost reduction, enhanced security, performance, scalability, and agility.
Our managed cloud services include:
- Monitoring of asset functioning
- Proactive issue remediation
- Highly secured architecture
- Superlative performance and cost management
- Regulatory compliance adherence
Our expertise with 800+ certifications and Oracle’s go-to Solutions partner for Oracle-powered apps enablement across the globe. I believe our simple equation gives you a clear view of our leading-edge capabilities to begin journey as your reliable MCSP:
(Cloud Security + Cloud@Dedicated Region + Cost Optimization) x Oracle Expertise = INFOLOB
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