According to Gartner, more than 50% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms to accelerate their business initiatives by 2027.
Cloud managed service (CMS) providers offer managed and professional services on major public cloud platforms like Oracle Cloud. Some of the key CMS offerings include a wide range of services, such as consulting and advice, agile application development, migration, automation, cloud brokerage, and managed services.
With so many services included in modern cloud environments, it’s easy to go into overdrive. Thankfully, whether it’s a cloud database, a fully managed container platform, or just managed infrastructure, cloud managed services make things a bit easier. With a more turnkey solution, the CMS provider takes care of at least some of the picking and choosing for you, freeing your time to work on other essential tasks.
5 Cloud Managed Services Offerings
1. Defining Your Cloud Strategy
IT leaders need to ask key questions about their organization’s most important areas to get the most out of cloud-native development. As companies move toward cloud and cloud-native development, it’s important to think about things like security and compliance, the complexity of operations and IT, and the skills of your current staff. These key areas will help you decide if you have the skills and time to manage, maintain, upgrade, and provide security for cloud infrastructure or if going for a cloud managed service provider a better choice.
2. Flexibility
In most organizations, especially larger ones and government agencies, there’s a constant need for both short-term and long-term flexibility. IT leaders such as CIOs have long been concerned about avoiding vendor lock-in, but being flexible also means evaluating your IT portfolio realistically and knowing which parts are good fits for a cloud managed services offerings(or the cloud, in general) and which aren’t.
When choosing the right cloud managed service provider, make sure they understand your technical estate’s entire economies of scale, the efficiencies that a provider bring to the table, and how to help you save money.
3. Simplicity and Speed
Developers are always being pushed to be quick on their feet in an environment where things change at break-neck speed and get more complicated. Cloud managed services offerings let you keep your best people working on development instead of managing and maintaining your infrastructure. Organizations want to get rid of the stress of finding, hiring, training, and keeping employees.
Also, moving to the cloud helps teams deliver faster, and cloud managed services offerings get rid of the need to install, configure, and learn the skills needed to keep infrastructure running.
4. Availability
IT leaders are always on the prowl for the best ways to use the latest technologies and run them on a variety of cloud and datacenter footprints. Cloud managed services offerings can give a consistent experience, anywhere in the world and across tools, for the entire technology stack of a company.
5. Aligned Goals
Especially with fully cloud managed services offerings and/or cloud services that include consulting or professional services, you need to make sure that the provider is in sync with your goals and business objectives. Ensure CMS providers understand you as a business, your background, and where you’re headed as an enterprise seeking revenue growth and innovation. CMS providers should work with key stakeholders in applications and practice areas to figure out the best way to reach specific business goals.
In general, when evaluating cloud managed services offerings, it’s important to match business strategy to capabilities. Of course, having the right skills is the first step. But in IT, delivery and results are also important. As such, methodology and execution are the most important parts of managed cloud practices.
Organizations are switching to cloud computing and using cloud-native development to be more agile, quick, and flexible. But this change brings new problems, like the need for new skills, processes, and resources to manage, monitor, and keep up with applications in any cloud environment. Cloud managed services offerings can help with this.
IT Convergence is an experienced cloud managed service provider delivering unique services across areas like consulting, infrastructure and systems, data center and network administration, middleware, storage, security, and more.
By focusing on tailored-made approaches for the individual needs of each organization, IT Convergence works with each to devise a solution for today and tomorrow’s technology roadmaps.
