The Ultimate Guide to Managed Cloud Services for Scaling Business
Take your business to the cloud with trusted managed cloud services. know the benefits and tips for seamless cloud migration.
Since the pandemic, technology has evolved drastically and organizations need to accelerate their digital trajectories to help their businesses scale. There is no doubt how cloud computing paved businesses a way to transform digitally, making it easier to connect globally irrespective of our location and time, unlocking great scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency.
But, navigating the intricacies of complex cloud infrastructures and applications is not somehow manageable for every business. They need specific skills and knowledge of how the cloud works leveraging the top technologies like AI and ML.
This is where, cloud-managed services and managed cloud services providers come to the rescue, serving as vendors to help businesses streamline and optimize their cloud journey.
Grand View Research says that the global cloud-managed services market was worth $267.3 billion in 2022 and expects to grow at a rate of 12.8% annually from 2023 to 2030.
Cloud management as a service takes charge of the migration process, guaranteeing a smooth transfer of essential data and applications with minimal impact on business operations.
In this comprehensive guide, we delve into the world of cloud-managed services, exploring their numerous advantages, standard service offerings, and their benefits in enabling businesses to thrive in the age of cloud computing.
Some businesses are still confused about what cloud-managed services are, let’s start with a quick introduction.
What are Cloud-Managed Services?
Cloud-managed services refer to the outsourcing of daily IT management responsibilities and functions to a third-party managed cloud services provider who specializes in cloud computing and cloud configuration management solutions.
These services typically include monitoring, maintenance, optimization, security, and support for cloud-based infrastructure, cloud asset management and applications.
By leveraging cloud-managed services, organizations can offload the complexities of managing their IT environment, allowing them to focus more on their core business objectives.
These services offer scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency, as they eliminate the need for extensive in-house IT resources and infrastructure.
Today, more and more companies are teaming up with cloud-managed services providers (MSPs) for help. A report shows that over 87% of modern businesses already use or plan to use MSPs to handle their infrastructure, up from 84% last year.
This trend makes sense due to the shortage of IT talent and the costs of managing in-house IT teams, driving the demand for managed cloud services.
But, do you know what cloud-managed services include? Every business needs to understand what cloud-managed services include, and how they can improve your overall cloud journey.
Cloud Managed Services Offerings
Cloud-managed services offer organizations a strategic approach to efficiently manage their cloud infrastructure, applications, and data. By leveraging the expertise of managed service providers (MSPs), businesses can streamline operations, enhance security, and optimize performance in the cloud environment.
Below are some typical offerings provided by cloud-managed service providers to support organizations in their cloud journey.
Cloud Monitoring and Performance Management
Managed Service Providers (MSPs) maintain constant surveillance over cloud resources, monitoring performance metrics and swiftly addressing any issues to ensure optimal uptime and efficiency.
Cloud Security and Compliance
Through managed services, stringent security protocols are implemented, covering identity management, encryption, and proactive threat detection to fortify cloud environments against cyber threats while maintaining compliance with industry regulations.
Cloud Infrastructure Management
MSPs proficiently manage the provisioning, scaling, and optimization of virtual machines, storage solutions, and networking components, ensuring effective utilization of cloud resources to meet organizational requirements.
Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery
Managed services establish thorough data backup and disaster recovery strategies, protecting critical information and facilitating seamless restoration in the event of system failures or unforeseen disasters.
Cost Optimization and Resource Management
MSPs analyze resource utilization patterns to identify opportunities for cost reduction and optimize cloud expenditures, delivering significant financial savings for businesses.
Cloud Migration and Onboarding
Cloud MSPs facilitate smooth transitions of applications and data to designated cloud environments, minimizing downtime and mitigating risks of data loss during the cloud migration process.
Application Management and Support
Managed services oversee the entire lifecycle of cloud-based applications, ensuring consistent performance through installation, configuration, monitoring, and timely support.
Vendor Management and Governance
MSPs expertly manage interactions with cloud service providers, ensuring adherence to SLAs and contractual obligations while establishing robust governance frameworks and best practices for efficient cloud management.
Cloud-Managed Data Center Services
These services offer comprehensive management and oversight of data center operations via cloud-based platforms, including monitoring, maintenance, security, and scalability. They provide organizations with efficient and reliable infrastructure management solutions, allowing them to optimize performance, enhance security, and focus resources on core business objectives.
These cloud management services benefit businesses in several ways. Let’s take a look at how.
Top Business Benefits of Cloud-Managed Services
In today’s fast-paced digital world, businesses face various complex IT issues, like managing IT systems, securing data, and ensuring business continuity. To tackle these challenges, many companies are turning to managed IT cloud services. Here, we’ll discuss some key benefits of using managed cloud services for your business in 2024 and beyond.
Cost-efficient solutions
Cloud-managed services help businesses save money by changing how they pay for technology and reducing the cost of maintaining computer systems. These services let companies adjust how much they spend on technology based on what they need, so they don’t waste money on things they don’t use. By hiring outside experts to manage their technology, businesses can save even more money on things like fixing problems and keeping systems up-to-date.
Plus, these services give businesses access to new and improved technology without having to spend a lot of money upfront. With cloud-managed services, businesses can plan their spending better and focus on growing their business. Overall, these services make managing technology easier and cheaper for businesses.
Enhance cyber-security
As per Researchgate, cyber security is one of the major concerns that holds cloud projects back.
With evolving technologies, comes a great responsibility to safeguard crucial information stored online. Thus, businesses are prioritizing cyber-security strategies leveraging cutting-edge technologies, reducing the footprint of cyber threats.
Cloud security managed service providers ensure providing consistent support and look for potential exposure to threats by implementing security measures, such as antivirus, multi-factor authentication, biometrics, and others.
Because managed cloud service providers know all about modern threats and IT rules, you can trust them to keep your important data safe and sound.
Disaster Recovery
With time, cyber-attacks have improvised, making it essential to take precautionary measures to protect the data. A single cyber attack incident can have a huge impact on a business or any business sector.
As per a recent incident, on February 15th, 2024, more than a hundred healthcare facilities in Romania fell victim to a ransomware attack, resulting in some doctors reverting to using pen and paper. Notably, children’s and emergency hospitals were impacted, prompting other facilities to go offline as a precautionary measure. The cyber criminals demanded 3.5 Bitcoin, equivalent to over £130,000, to decrypt essential files they had locked. However, Romanian cyber officials reassured that recent data backups had mitigated the impact of the attack.
Cloud-managed services employ a combination of automated backup solutions, redundant storage, disaster recovery planning, testing, and continuous monitoring to ensure data recovery capabilities and protect against data loss in cloud environments.
Scalability
Scalability is a critical aspect of cloud-managed services, enabling businesses to adapt their resources in response to changing needs and demands. With cloud scalability, businesses can easily scale up resources during peak periods of activity or scale down during quieter times, ensuring optimal resource utilization and cost efficiency.
Managed service providers (MSPs) play a crucial role in facilitating scalability by offering flexible service plans and architectures that allow businesses to adjust their cloud resources dynamically.
MSPs leverage automation and orchestration tools to streamline the process of provisioning and scaling resources, enabling businesses to respond quickly to fluctuations in demand without the need for manual intervention.
Netflix relies on AWS for swift innovation and premium entertainment delivery, leveraging its infrastructure to scale seamlessly worldwide. Additionally, AWS enables Netflix to establish a cloud-based studio, fostering global collaboration among artists for enhanced content creation.
Performance and reliability
Performance and reliability are paramount considerations for businesses leveraging cloud-managed services to support their operations. MSPs work closely with clients to design and implement cloud architectures that meet their performance requirements and ensure high availability and reliability.
MSPs leverage advanced monitoring and management tools to continuously monitor cloud resources and applications, proactively identifying and addressing performance issues before they impact business operations.
MSPs employ best practices for resource optimization and workload management, ensuring that cloud resources are utilized efficiently and effectively.
By partnering with MSPs, businesses can benefit from enhanced performance, reliability, and availability of their cloud infrastructure, enabling them to deliver a superior experience to their customers and stakeholders.
Flexibility and Agility
Flexibility and agility are essential attributes that businesses gain from cloud-managed services, allowing them to respond quickly to changing market dynamics and seize new opportunities.
MSPs help businesses achieve flexibility and agility by providing access to a wide range of cloud services and technologies that can be easily scaled and customized to meet specific business needs.
MSPs offer flexible service plans and contract terms that allow businesses to scale their resources up or down as needed, without being locked into long-term commitments.
MSPs provide expertise in cloud architecture design and application development, helping businesses leverage cloud-native technologies and methodologies to accelerate innovation and time-to-market.
By partnering with MSPs, businesses can stay agile and competitive in today’s fast-paced business environment, enabling them to adapt quickly to changing market conditions and drive growth and success.
Successful Real-World Storing of Cloud Managed Services
Leveraging managed cloud services has benefitted several brands in streamlining their business operations, let’s explore how.
Netflix
Netflix, a renowned streaming service, has fully embraced cloud infrastructure by migrating its entire operations to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Leveraging AWS’s extensive suite of services for scalability, fault tolerance, and global content delivery, Netflix efficiently manages massive streaming data, ensuring seamless user experiences across devices.
AirBnB
Airbnb, an online vacation rental marketplace, heavily relies on cloud infrastructure, primarily AWS, to handle website and mobile app traffic, as well as database and storage needs. Through cloud services, Airbnb scales its infrastructure for peak booking seasons, ensuring a reliable platform for hosts and guests amid high traffic volumes.
Spotify
Spotify, a leading music streaming platform, utilizes cloud infrastructure from Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and AWS to store and deliver vast music libraries worldwide. With cloud infrastructure, Spotify offers personalized features like recommendations and playlists to millions of users, enhancing their music streaming experience.
NASA
NASA, the U.S. space agency, adopts cloud infrastructure from AWS and Microsoft Azure for scientific research and data analysis. Utilizing cloud services, NASA efficiently stores and processes large data volumes from space missions, facilitating global collaboration and reducing infrastructure maintenance costs.
Pinterest, a visual content-sharing platform, relies on AWS cloud infrastructure to store and manage user-generated content and deliver image assets quickly. With cloud scalability, Pinterest efficiently handles increasing user activity while providing a seamless user experience.
How to Choose the Right Cloud-Managed Services?
Choosing the right cloud-managed services involves several key considerations.
- Business Needs- Assess your organization’s specific requirements, such as scalability, security, compliance, and budget constraints. Determine which cloud services align best with your business goals and objectives.
- Service Offerings- Evaluate the range of services offered by cloud-managed service providers (MSPs), including infrastructure management, security, data backup, disaster recovery, and support. Ensure that the provider offers the services you need to meet your business requirements.
- Experience and Expertise- Look for MSPs with a proven track record and expertise in managing cloud environments, particularly in your industry or niche. Consider factors such as certifications, industry recognition, and customer testimonials to assess the provider’s capabilities.
- Scalability and Flexibility- Choose a provider that can scale with your business growth and adapt to changing requirements. Ensure that the provider offers flexible service plans and can accommodate your evolving needs over time.
- Security and Compliance- Prioritize security and compliance requirements when selecting a cloud-managed service provider. Ensure that the provider follows industry best practices, adheres to relevant regulations, and implements robust security measures to protect your data and infrastructure.
- Performance and Reliability- Assess the provider’s infrastructure, network, and data center facilities to ensure optimal performance and reliability. Look for providers with a strong uptime guarantee and redundant infrastructure to minimize downtime and ensure uninterrupted service availability.
- Support and SLAs- Evaluate the provider’s support offerings, including response times, escalation procedures, and service-level agreements (SLAs). Ensure that the provider offers 24/7 support and proactive monitoring to address issues promptly and minimize service disruptions.
- Cost and Value- Consider the total cost of ownership (TCO) when evaluating cloud-managed services. Compare pricing plans, contract terms, and billing structures to determine the most cost-effective option that delivers the best value for your organization.
- Stay ahead of the latest trends- Make sure the MSPs that you choose harness the power of the latest technologies to provide future-proof services and help you stay competitive in this scaling and digitally transformed era. Technologies like, IoT, AI, ML, and Blockchain.
Why Cloud Managed Services?
Managed cloud services aren’t just temporary solutions; rather, most companies view them as a long-term strategy, with 73% of current users planning to increase their reliance on these services over time. Only a small fraction, 4%, anticipate reducing their dependence, while 23% expect it to remain the same.
The overwhelming majority, 87%, agree that managed services are growing in importance as technology skills become increasingly challenging to obtain and retain.
Cloud-managed services revenue is set to grow faster than on-premises services. While cloud-managed services adoption is strong, most revenue, around 80%, still comes from on-premises environments, with cloud services making up about 20%.
However, we expect the growth rate of cloud-managed services to more than double that of on-premises services.
Collaborate with OnGraph for next-gen Cloud Managed Services
Partnering with OnGraph for next-generation cloud-managed services presents an unparalleled opportunity for businesses to optimize their operations and unlock the full potential of cloud technology.
With a proven track record of delivering innovative solutions and comprehensive support, OnGraph empowers organizations to navigate the complexities of cloud infrastructure with confidence.
By leveraging their expertise and cutting-edge technologies, businesses can streamline processes, enhance security, and drive growth in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape. With OnGraph as a trusted partner, businesses can embark on a transformative journey toward success in the cloud era.
