Today, most businesses take advantage of cloud computing, whether for running applications, storing data or for backup and recovery. Increasingly, those companies are moving towards a managed cloud solution for its extended range of services. If you are still considering cloud migration, here we explain why a managed cloud solution is your best option.
What is a managed cloud solution?
A managed cloud solution is where a business outsources the management of its cloud infrastructure to its service provider. This usually includes services like operating system updating, patching and server monitoring; however, it is possible to create bespoke managed solutions where the service provider carries out a wider range of services, such as data management, app deployment, and backup and continuity. Outsourcing these tasks reduces the burden on in-house IT teams, freeing them up to work on more critical projects.
Here are the key benefits of a managed cloud solution.
- Save on infrastructure
Running in-house servers is a costly enterprise. New servers are very expensive to purchase, require regular management and maintenance and are power-hungry machines, using over 7,000kWh per year. When you migrate to a managed cloud solution, there is no need to purchase hardware at all as you will be using the infrastructure of your service provider. The provider will also take care of management, maintenance, power and other operating costs. - Cash-flow-friendly payments
Not only do you forego the need to purchase hardware when you migrate to a managed cloud solution; you also benefit from paying a fixed rate monthly fee. Knowing in advance what your costs are and never having to budget for hardware upgrades or unexpected repairs makes it much easier on the company’s cash flow. Simply choose the package that suits your business needs in terms of storage and compute resources and your monthly spending will stay stable. Of course, as with all services, this might be subject to price increases over time. - More robust security
With cyberattacks growing in both number and sophistication, all businesses need to take security seriously. Doing so requires security expertise and investment in the right tools, something that not all businesses can easily achieve in-house. With a managed cloud solution, the service provider can reinforce the company’s security with its own defences. For example, at eukhost, our security teams use next-gen FortiGate firewalls, with built-in intrusion and malware prevention, to keep threats away from your cloud server. - 100% uptime
With more of your customers visiting online and employees working remotely, critical applications need to stay online all the time. Unlike physical servers, virtual cloud servers can be moved instantly from one physical machine to another. This means that if the physical machine your cloud server uses needs to be rebooted or repaired, your critical applications will keep on running. Indeed, with backup data centres in place, your services will remain online even if a natural disaster like a fire or flood takes a whole data centre offline. - Scalability
While a cloud virtual server can ensure your applications have 100% availability, one issue that could take them offline is if your server runs out of storage, RAM or CPU resources. If you have a sudden surge in traffic or are carrying out resource-hungry processes, you might find that the resources in your plan are used up and this can cause apps to perform sluggishly or even crash.One of the biggest benefits of a managed cloud solution is that you can scale up resources on-demand, at the click of a button. As a result, you can continue operating during your busiest periods without issue and any additional resources used are charged for on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Scalability of this kind in-house would require the purchase of additional servers which would need to be left redundant until needed.
- Better compliance
Today, nearly all businesses handle personal data and are thus under obligation to comply with data protection regulations, like GDPR. Data can be better managed and secured in the cloud. By centralising data in the cloud, businesses know exactly where all their data is and can control and monitor who has access to it. Furthermore, data can be encrypted in transit and at rest to prevent it from being accessed even in the event of a breach.For organisations that handle sensitive data, such as police forces, social services and healthcare, a managed cloud solution can include hybrid cloud architecture. By storing data in the single tenancy private cloud, compliance can be even stronger.
- Disaster recovery and business continuity
Ransomware, data corruption, human error and various other threats can all result in data loss and system failure. This can have catastrophic outcomes for organisations, taking services offline for extended periods and potentially resulting in business failure. The key to preventing such consequences is being able to recover quickly and restore data to as recently as possible. These are known as the recovery time and recovery point objectives.With a managed cloud, you can put disaster recovery and business continuity solutions in place to prevent the worst from happening. Modern cloud backup solutions enable you to continuously back up data at the frequency you need, ensuring your recovery point objectives can be achieved. At the same time, those backups are stored remotely, encrypted and checked for integrity to make sure they are not corrupt. What’s more, when stored in and recovered to the cloud, the speed at which recovery takes place is much quicker than can be achieved through other forms of backup (e.g., disks) or to different types of hosting (e.g., dedicated server).
Is your business prepared for disasters? Discover 10 Tips for an Effective Disaster Recovery Plan Now! - 24/7 technical support
eukhost managed cloud customers have 24/7 access to our technical support team. Regardless of the time of day or the issue you are facing, you will have an expert on hand to help you put matters right. We are also able to provide bespoke support services for customers should they require it. This can include infrastructure health and security audits, compliance assistance and IT strategy and consultancy.
Conclusion
A managed cloud solution can provide businesses with a wide range of benefits. These include cost savings, scalability, high availability, improved security and compliance, and backup and continuity. In addition, managed solutions enable companies to reduce the burden on in-house IT teams while also providing much-needed technical support and IT expertise.
