Cloud managed services, also known as managed cloud, are the partial or complete control and management of an organization's cloud resources or infrastructure by the external party of a cloud managed service provider.
Said resources can refer to an application, service, or entire ecosystem in the cloud, while a cloud managed service provider is the vendor or cloud platform that offers cloud managed services.
How Do Cloud Managed Services Work?
Cloud managed service providers offer services centered around cloud resources, such as strategy development, deployment, migration, configuration, upgrading, optimization, security, and maintenance.
Additional IT tasks such as engineering on demand, operations management, 24/7 help desk support, infrastructure monitoring, and data backup and recovery are also available.
Cloud managed service providers can serve as a replacement for in-house cloud IT teams, or as a supplement to existing teams. They usually offer subscription offerings for a wide range of services, and their responsibilities range from the management and control of a few specific services or applications of an organization, to the entire cloud infrastructure.
Cloud managed services can be utilized at any point in the lifecycle of cloud adoption and for public, private and hybrid cloud environments. They are usually engaged by an organization before they begin cloud migration, such that the organization can determine which cloud resources are the most suitable, and to ensure that configuration is correctly performed.
Organizations can choose which IT functions they will control, and which infrastructure or functions will be under the responsibility of the cloud managed service provider. They can also pay for additional services as and when they need it.
Hence, organizations can ensure the smooth operation of their cloud resources without having to bear the costs of installing and maintaining cloud software or hardware, including hiring a team to manage said resources. The service provider owns, operates and maintains the physical infrastructure and data center used by the client organization for their cloud solution needs.
By ensuring that the organization's cloud infrastructure is running efficiently, cloud managed service providers enable organizations to maximize benefits from cloud services while minimizing internal time and costs.
Types of Cloud Managed Services
Cloud managed services span a range of different cloud-based services. These allow organizations to tailor their solutions to their business needs and their current position in the cloud solution lifecycle.
These services include:
- Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS)
IaaS allows organizations to rent or lease computing resources on-demand such as servers, storage, processing power, networking components and other infrastructure. It's possible for organizations to build and manage their own virtual data centers while maintaining a greater level of control.
- Platform-as-a-service (PaaS)
PaaS delivers complete, ready-to-use application development platforms, together with development tools, operating systems, middleware and databases, using virtualization. Developers can develop, test, run and manage applications without the need to maintain the platform itself.
- Software-as-a-service (SaaS)
SaaS provides complete, ready-to-use applications hosted on the cloud. Based on subscription models, SaaS applications tend to be multi-tenant, with users purchasing licenses to access the same copy of the software, rather than purchasing individual copies of their own. The infrastructure needed to deliver the application is hosted and managed by the SaaS vendor.
Benefits of Cloud Managed Services
Why do organizations need cloud managed services? Such services bring about several advantages, such as:
1. Scalability
Cloud managed services can scale up and down with the size of the organization, depending on whether it grows or shrinks. The cloud managed service provider can allocate and deploy additional resources as needed, allowing organizations to quickly and easily provision resources to adapt to changing business requirements.
2. Cost savings
Cost savings go hand-in-hand with the scalability and pay-as-you-go pricing model of cloud managed services, in which organizations pay only for the resources they use.
This enables organizations to remain cost-effective while using cloud managed services. Additionally, employing a cloud managed service provider frees organizations from the costs and responsibilities of purchasing and maintaining cloud resources such as servers, software, and infrastructure, further reducing costs.
3. Security and compliance
Cloud managed service providers implement security controls, threat monitoring mechanisms, relevant compliance regulations and standards with 24/7 monitoring to improve data security across their cloud resources. Additionally, cloud infrastructure, along with their security protocols, are automatically updated and upgraded.
This enables organizations to increase their operational efficiency by delivering new applications and services with the latest cloud security measures to market quickly, all while complying with ever-changing industry and government regulations.
4. Disaster recovery
Cloud services, which are always online, back up and sync data on a 24/7 basis. In the event of a disaster, cloud managed services can easily retrieve, restore and redeploy data without system-wide disruptions. Disaster recovery support decreases downtime to fortify organizational resilience and availability by allowing them to resume their usual business processes quickly.
Why work with a Cloud Managed Service Provider?
In addition to the inherent benefits of cloud managed services, working with a cloud managed service provider brings about several benefits.
Centralized control
With a cloud managed service provider, all cloud infrastructure controls are centralized in a single place, increasing the ease of use and decreasing downtime.
Resource optimization
Cloud managed service providers help you optimize performance while minimizing costs by determining the following:
Which services best fit your workloads
The most cost-efficient pricing models for your needs
Performance metrics and reports for your existing resources
Suggestions for enhancing configurations
Custom cloud integrations
When setting up complex hybrid or multi-cloud environments, which are more complex to deploy than single-cloud or cloud-only setups, cloud managed service providers are able to tailor the ideal configurations for services in these environments that best fit an organization's workloads. They ensure that selected cloud resources are smoothly integrated into existing IT configurations and can be accessed without issue by users and applications.
Cloud Managed Costs and Solutions
Curious to reap the cost benefits of cloud managed services' pay-as-you-go model? Compare prices for a range of products using the pricing calculators of the three biggest cloud providers.
Examples of when to Use Cloud Managed Services:
How do cloud managed services benefit you on a practical level? Let's look a few scenarios:
Disaster recovery solutions: Cloud managed services are an ideal component of a disaster recovery plan, as they provide quick and easy failover, together with backup and recovery services, in the event of a disaster or system failure. Building and maintaining your own infrastructure is not required.
Big data: Cloud-based resources are excellent for storing, managing and analyzing vast amounts of data, while maintaining the high levels of performance required for big data analytics.
Internet of Things (IoT): Cloud managed services provide the infrastructure with the necessary speed, scalability and support required to store, process and analyze the massive volumes of data generated by IoT devices and systems, enabling them to function quickly and efficiently.
Take the Next Step
Regardless of where you are on your cloud migration and adoption journey, reap the benefits and cost savings of cloud managed services with Hi Cloud.
As an expert on the cloud offerings of the biggest cloud providers - such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, Hi Cloud creates the ideal configuration of cloud products and services for your unique organizational needs with the technical team to manage your resources with 24/7 monitoring.
