Managed services offer businesses a better way to buy and manage their technology. A lot of today’s technology is for storing, securing, and leveraging important data. A managed service provider can help you get more value out of your data management practices. Let’s look at how.
How Can a Managed Service Provider Improve Your Data Management?
As we did in the last episode, let’s compare the experience that a managed service provider delivers to the Google-It-Yourself version.
Cloud ServicesTom’s business has a lot of data storage needs, and quite a few data-heavy apps, as do most businesses. Tom chooses to host his assorted solutions in-house. Jerry’s business has the same situation, but he decides to go with cloud services, storing his data and hosting his business-critical applications in the cloud for a monthly fee.
Tom is now responsible for maintaining the hardware and software, which takes up a lot of his staff’s time and resources, or might not get done at all, which could be a disaster. The infrastructure needed to host his solutions wasn’t cheap, so he dropped a bundle on it. Tom and his team are responsible for everything; updating the solutions, maintaining and securing them. Tom’s investment quickly becomes more expensive than first anticipated.
Jerry, on the other hand, reaches out to his managed service provider, which quickly hooks him up with a trustworthy cloud service, using its experience and professional relationships. Jerry is able to store his data and host his applications in the cloud space, so he’s not responsible for the maintenance. He pays a predictable monthly fee based on his usage, and he is protected by the service’s uptime guarantee.
Backup and Disaster Recovery
Unfortunately, the city in which Tom and Jerry both operate is hit by some natural disaster. Whether they use cloud services via a managed service provider could decide which company makes it through.
Since Tom’s solutions are all in-house, the disaster could easily destroy all his data, and since he never got around to maintaining an offsite backup, all he has is a copy of his files saved to a network-attached storage device. As a result, the disaster leaves him without any of his data… and his business is up a creek.
Since Jerry has been using the cloud to host his data and applications, when the disaster strikes his business, his data is safe. Managed care makes sure his cloud service stores his data in multiple places, so it isn’t affected by the same disaster that took out his office. This means that Jerry’s data, so vital to business continuity, is safe and sound, able to be recovered as soon as he is ready.
Data Warehousing
Data warehousing is the process of combining seemingly unrelated data into large business analytics and business intelligence platforms. These platforms are now becoming more important, and give decision-makers a thorough knowledge base to work from.
This requires quite a bit of computing power, so Tom’s in-house system won’t be enough. Jerry has his managed service provider to assist him, so he has a definite advantage. To accomplish Jerry’s goals, the managed service provider can adjust his infrastructure for analysis, opening him up to increased business opportunities.
Don’t Miss the Next Installment in this Series!
Up next, how a managed service provider assists with IT procurement. If you still haven’t subscribed, do it now! Or just give us a call at (973) 882-4644! Quikteks can help.