At present numerous organisations are much different from a decade ago. They are into cloud adoption, and it is going widespread. In fact, organisations are heavily investing in competent cloud infrastructure management to relish powers. In fact, organisations are embracing the cloud and investing in cloud migration, configuration, and optimisation. Moreover, to use such cloud services, because of different positive aspects, enterprises are considering cloud-managed services as an essential component of every business strategy. In this blog, we will look at how valuable Managed Services are for Enterprises.
What is an IT Infrastructure?
IT infrastructure includes the collection of hardware, software, network resources, and services required for an enterprise IT environment. These combined components are necessary to operate and manage enterprise IT services and IT environments.
Types of IT infrastructure
Traditional infrastructure
Here, data centres, data storage, desktop PCs, corporate application software, and other equipment the company operates and owns within its facilities are included.
Cloud infrastructure
It includes components and resources needed for cloud computing. Businesses can opt for a private cloud( internal or corporate cloud) or use public cloud services ( by renting cloud infrastructure from a cloud provider). Also, businesses can choose a hybrid cloud if they need the best private and public cloud.
The cloud platform allows software and hardware products to co-exist remotely. The much-in-demand cloud solutions are getting used to deliver IT resources. Cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services(AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Oracle Cloud deliver services on a pay-for-use basis to their subscribers. In a cloud environment, deployment and running of software applications can be done on a sophisticated infrastructure that is owned and managed by a cloud provider.
Hyperconverged infrastructure
This infrastructure lets businesses manage computing, network, and data storage resources from a single interface. A hyper-converged platform has four tightly integrated software components, i.e. Storage virtualisation, Compute virtualisation, Networking virtualisation, and Advanced management, including automation.
Why Does IT Infrastructure Matter?
In today’s world, a company’s IT infrastructure must be adaptable and reliable to achieve its goals and gain a competitive advantage. If their IT infrastructure is not configured correctly, businesses must deal with connectivity, productivity, and security issues. All in all, the quality of business IT infrastructure determines the success of a business.
What Is Enterprise IT Infrastructure?
Enterprise IT infrastructure is the sum of all the components(hardware, software, and network components) required to run a big-scale business’s IT services. It can include all of the technology that makes modern business feasible. At present, efficient and effective IT management can be difficult as big businesses use IT services and infrastructure, such as IoT-capable devices, CRM software, etc. Complex IT services pipelines and infrastructure, multiple office locations and remote employees, cloud systems, off-site servers, and new technologies are to be installed, updated or maintained. This is where a professional effort is needed to check on the entire IT infrastructure.
How can Managed Service Provider help in IT Infrastructure?
Big enterprises mostly have internal IT teams to manage cloud environments. Although enterprises can afford specifically to reskill the team and set up the necessary infrastructure tools, there is another convenient and cost-effective option to meet their or their clients’ IT infrastructure requirements, typically Cloud-related. And the option is Managed Service Provider.
A managed service provider (MSP) is a third-party company that provides technical support remotely for its customers- a person, SME or even enterprise- IT infrastructure. They deliver services related to networks, applications, infrastructure, incident management, resource optimisation, and many more. Most businesses prefer an end-to-end solution (E2ES) model of MSPs so that they don’t have to work with many different vendors and service providers.
We will discuss other benefits of MSPs for enterprises in this blog.
Benefits Of Managed Cloud Services for Enterprise IT Infrastructure
Focus on the Business Objectives
When enterprises migrate from an IT team that is on-premises to an MSP, their workload will be reduced. This forces you to delegate more responsibility to employees focused on achieving important business objectives.
Efficient network infrastructure
MCSPs offer cloud-based services to your IT infrastructure paired with 24/7 availability. To meet core business objectives, improve customers’ experience, and accelerate business growth, MSPs put forward their best practices and ensure agility. In fact, they continuously evaluate their practices and use the required tools to find loopholes or gaps and eventually solve the problems.
Cybersecurity and Data Protection
MSPs make data security and protection solutions more affordable for startups and small businesses. Also, MSPs assist enterprises in protecting their data because they have visibility into all the devices and applications connected to their networks. MSPs give organisations a competitive advantage and empower them to be better prepared for cyberattacks by executing phishing attack simulations and red team evaluations. Overall, MSPs can provide a wide range of security services, such as security auditing, penetration testing, vulnerability management, and incident response.
Business continuity and Backup and Disaster Recovery Services
Business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR or BC/DR) are strategies and techniques that assist a company in recovering from a disaster and continuing or resuming business activities. The disaster recovery procedure includes cloud collaboration, which provides continuous business continuity.
Managed Cloud Services provide assistance to businesses in maintaining their operations. They ensure your valuable data is regularly backed up. This sort of data backup can help employees and customers enjoy uninterrupted service. MSPs are also familiar with the business-critical applications (apps needed for business continuity) and how to operate and manage them.
Minimal Downtime, Better Uptime
With every second of downtime, a company can lose money and even clients. A cloud-managed services company can expertly set up technology for businesses, eventually reducing downtime and optimising procedures. Furthermore, with managed cloud services, you no longer need to assign an internal IT person or team to ensure network uptime. MSPs are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to maintain maximum uptime so enterprises can focus on their core company operations.
Proactive interfacing
While performing business operations in the cloud, MSPs can take full responsibility for technological concerns and respond quickly. This can hence help in saving customers’ time and work and also keep total expenses under control.
Improved Compliance
Compliance is a key and increasing concern for many organisations. It is also important to consider the level of compliance when choosing any services. Utilising managed cloud services is one way to ensure businesses are meeting compliance requirements effectively. To keep clients’ businesses secure, MSPs continue to Build Security Frameworks. In fact, they are prepared to meet whatever challenges come their way. For that, MSPs are found to be using Zero Trust Roadmap for MSPs as well as investing in Cyber Insurance for MSPs.
Data centralisation
When businesses consider making leverage, they consider having centralised data. Data centralisation is the process of gathering all of the company’s data in one place. The value of centralised data is growing as organisations rely on more data than ever. In a managed network, businesses can centralise their apps and servers in managed data centres. Connection to the network’s centralised data centres can also enable access to virtual services and storage and backup infrastructure.
Integration of new services and updates
Every month, we witness regular technology and software upgrades, and it is a fact that new technology means new problems. MSPs who are specialists in technical, functional, architectural, and training aspects of IT systems can help your business tackle the challenges new upgrades bring. It also boosts business and eventually makes them a leader in the niche. MSPs also provide a robust and comprehensive set of solutions to keep your business more secure.
Helps to Avoid High Infrastructure Costs Savings
By availing of cloud-managed services by MSPs, enterprises can scale up without investing more in servers or maintenance costs.
In fact, cloud services provide a fixed monthly cost with no unexpected charges, allowing you to create a consistent budget. Businesses can also join a multi-tenant scheme, which is the capacity to provide a service to multiple clients from a single central infrastructure while retaining separation and a high level of security. Hence, we can conclude that Enterprises choosing MSP is a cost-efficient move.
Being Competitive with Larger Companies
Enterprises have to compete with other existing larger organisations. They are moving to the cloud, giving businesses access to robust solutions. In addition, managed cloud providers help guide businesses through securing cloud hosting and services that make them more competitive with their larger counterparts.
These are the benefits enterprises can get when outsourcing their IT works to MSPs. Hence, to get all these benefits, trusting a good cloud-managed service provider is important. You must look for their best qualities in terms of cloud-managed services to their clients and how they have been reviewed.
When choosing an MSP for your enterprise, be aware of these qualities and double-check if they have all or lack any:
- Check their interpersonal skills that enhance the working relationship and clear Communication, mostly in the English language.
- MSPs should show the ability for critical thinking and the ability to make quick-fix by deeper understanding. They must accurately analyse a problem, detect patterns, get to the root cause and fix them.
- MSP’s creative thinking can often help maximise an enterprise’s IT investment and environment. They can also advise you about future purchases that could be game-changers.
- Always choose an MSP that has the spirit of collaboration, working with your business to optimise IT infrastructure in the best way possible so it can ensure the overall success of your business.
- They must be in touch with state-of-the-art technology and new advances and track emerging trends and cybersecurity threats so that they can proactively recommend solutions to problems before they even arise.
- MSPs should understand the unique challenges that your business is facing and the requirements to be attained with the change in time. So, a good MSP will scale up or down according to business needs. This implies that an MSP must offer businesses flexibility and scalability.
- Billing is only one component you need to consider when signing a contract with an MSP; however, you must expect transparency from the MSPs. If you fail to work with the right provider, your business may go through a tough time, so be cautious about it.
Why choose NSW IT Support as your Managed Cloud Service Provider?
With over 8 years of experience and 350 happy clients, NSW IT SUPPORT has been the trusted IT Support Company in Australia, offering great Managed cloud services, including responding to IT security threats, mitigating risk, and ensuring compliance by monitoring security information management. With our Managed IT Services, we assist businesses by offering enhanced program visibility and assisting in data management & predictive analytics. For further information about our cloud-managed services and pricing models, please kindly contact us.