The success of cloud technologies that have appeared on the market in the last decade is beyond doubt. Almost every IT publication touches on the growth, innovation, and new use cases enabled by the cloud. For most people, the word “cloud” brings to mind Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google, which makes sense, as they are the most established and successful providers of hyper-scale public cloud services. Yet these three industry leaders have failed to completely capture the market. Not only is there a niche left for the Managed cloud service provider (MCSP), but there are many reasons why they are necessary and often the best choice for the vast majority of companies.
Choosing a public cloud infrastructure requires specialized knowledge and experience
Often, organizations make the false assumption that they can simply take their on-premises infrastructure and move it to a hyper-scale public cloud service. While this is often what is promised given the similarity of the overall infrastructure, the reality is that many fundamental elements such as the control plane, networking, and security are quite different and problems arise very quickly. Choosing to work with an MCSP can help: either the runtime environment will closely mirror the on-premises environment, or the managed service will act as an effective intermediary to the public cloud and bring the cloud expertise needed to integrate the two different environments. In an ecosystem where the most important competitive advantage is the timing of supply, this cannot be underestimated. The MCSP community will likely become a critical enabler for hyperscale public cloud services while facilitating transitional and hybrid management.
Effective financial management of cloud computing
One of my favorite phrases is: “Working in the cloud is not charity.” The ability of cloud services to generate income is based on their ability to accumulate the margins of different services. While a public cloud service can be very effective when serving flexible workloads with a high degree of variability, as well as when hosting workloads remotely or using preconfigured services, it is less cost-effective for static workloads with predictable infrastructure needs. As all public cloud services compete for market leadership and customers select workloads that take full advantage of public cloud services, MCSPs provide the ability to decouple workloads from the public cloud while closely monitoring cost parameters by dynamically varying the placement of data and services based on benefits for the customer. This is a clear and defined added value that most clients are unable to measure.
Convenient management in decentralized networks
The essence of the IT world resides in a simple axiom: connectivity is key. Enterprises frequently grapple with twin hurdles hampering service delivery: the capacity and speed of transmitting data to users. Though expanding bandwidth is feasible albeit expensive, surpassing the speed of light is an unattainable frontier. These constraints wield significant influence on services, catalyzing the emergence of tech giants like content delivery networks (CDNs). The hypothetical obviation of CDNs could arise if data dispatch from numerous expansive centralized nodes became feasible. However, CDNs persist and thrive in the dynamic realm of technology.
Why? The networking of decentralized models optimizes content delivery to the end user. Many of the hyperscale public cloud services have recognized this fact and offer services to host small amounts of computing on IoT devices, either in customer data centers or at a regional partner’s location. This, of course, improves the quality of services provided, but the business model of a hyperscale public cloud service is not the same as decentralized networks, since the latter use economies of scale to reduce prices. MCSP can add infrastructure to the decentralized model that is loosely coupled to the services of a central public cloud service.
Focus on core business tasks while IT is handled by the managed cloud service provider
Frequently, businesses struggle with maintaining their momentum due to a scattered approach. Attempting to handle multiple tasks simultaneously hampers their progress. Collaborating with a Managed cloud service provider (MCSP) often permits them to optimize their IT framework through a Service Level Agreement (SLA), liberating valuable internal assets to concentrate on fundamental business aims. Many IT functionalities, like email and communication services, are conventionally outsourced to reliable partners — extending this paradigm to infrastructure and platform solutions seems logical. By relying on the MCSP’s specialized services, the client can fully dedicate attention to advancing its business objectives.
The integration of cloud technologies has significantly reshaped the industry paradigm. However, it’s a fallacy to perceive that the eventual outcome of this shift confines organizations solely to the selection of major public cloud providers. Amidst this technological metamorphosis, engaging with a dependable Managed cloud service provider —one deeply understanding the customer’s business—typically emerges as the most sagacious and efficacious choice.