The Complete Guide to Managed Cloud Services
Managed cloud services provide partial or full cloud management of public environments, as well as hybrid IT. Each managed cloud service provider (MCSP) delivers a different value, taking care of certain aspects. MCSP responsibilities may include migration, optimization, security, configuration, and optimization. Typical advantages of MCSPs are resource optimization, cloud integration, and consistent and predictable spend. However, MCSP costs are often high, performance is not ideal, and multiple leases may lead to data protection issues.
What are managed cloud services?
Managed cloud services are the partial or complete management and control of a customer's cloud platform, including migration, maintenance, and optimization. With a managed cloud service provider, a business can ensure that its cloud resources are running efficiently. Outsourcing cloud management also allows companies to avoid new recruitment and training costs.
Managed cloud services can provide private, public, and hybrid cloud environments. Working with a managed cloud service provider is a collaborative process. To determine the best cloud resources for a user's IT infrastructure, the managed cloud services vendor evaluates the user's applications and data. Then, they will create a custom plan detailing the steps to build and run an optimized cloud environment.
Offering a managed cloud service frees organizations from the responsibility of purchasing and maintaining IT resources, such as servers, software, and networking components. Managed service providers may also provide additional support services, such as data backup and restoration and infrastructure monitoring.
Some of the benefits of cloud managed services
1) Cost saving
Using a managed cloud service provider will save you money in the long run. With a managed service provider, you are no longer responsible for any capital or operating expenses incurred in maintaining your cloud infrastructure.
2) Automatic upgrades
Using a managed cloud service provider frees you from trying to keep your network up to date. The managed service provider stays up to date with the latest developments in the cloud and upgrades the network infrastructure as needed.
3) Disaster recovery
In the event of an unexpected disaster, it is important to have a disaster recovery plan in place to protect your data and recover it as soon as possible. The faster you can retrieve and restore your data, the faster you can resume normal business operations.
How do managed cloud services work?
With managed cloud services, customers do not need to set up, install, configure, or maintain software or hardware. The service provider owns, operates, and maintains the data centers and physical infrastructure, and then makes them available via the cloud.
Customers pay for these services using a subscription form and access the resources through a web browser or API. The service provider ensures that resources are always available and up to date, and provides support for resolving issues and other services such as performance and security monitoring. Providers can deliver managed services on premises, via the public cloud, or in a hybrid environment.
Common types of managed cloud services
Managed service providers offer a wide range of cloud services that allow organizations to tailor their solutions to their business needs, including:
IaaS service
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a cloud service that allows organizations to rent or lease virtualized computing resources, such as infrastructure, processing power, storage, and networking components on demand from an external provider. With IaaS, organizations can aggregate and manage their own virtualized data centers while maintaining a greater level of control over their infrastructure.
PaaS service
Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a cloud-based solution that gives developers access to a platform for developing applications, including development tools, operating systems, middleware, and databases, using virtualization. Developers can develop, test and manage applications in the cloud without the need to maintain the underlying platform.
SaaS service
Software as a Service (SaaS) offers complete, ready-to-use, cloud-based online applications on a subscription model. Typically, SaaS applications are multi-tenant where users purchase licenses to access the same copy of the software, rather than purchasing their own individual copies.
BMaaS Service
Bare metal as a service (BMaaS) is a subset of IaaS, in which MCSPs deploy dedicated physical servers to an organization on a pay-per-use basis. Unlike traditional IaaS, BMaaS servers do not come with compute, network, and storage virtualization. Customers have exclusive use of the hardware and near complete control over the configuration and management of its infrastructure.
STaaS service
Storage as a Service (STaaS) makes storage capacity available from a cloud provider on a subscription basis. Typical STaaS offerings include raw volumes, bare metal storage, object storage, network file systems, and storage applications.
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