Managed Cloud Services.

Managed cloud services involve partial or total management of your cloud resources and/ or infrastructure. A managed cloud service provider may be responsible for your migration, configuration, optimisation, security and maintenance, as well as ensuring your applications and cloud foundation deliver maximum value.

Managed cloud services can include infrastructure management (e.g. servers, storage), application management (e.g. databases, middleware), and cloud migration services.

A managed cloud service provider (MCSP) is a vendor that offers managed cloud services. MCSPs can be either the cloud providers themselves, for example AWS, Azure and/ or GCP, or a third-party vendor. MCSPs can either replace inhouse cloud departments within IT teams or as a supplementary resource.

When choosing a managed cloud service provider, consider factors such as their reputation, experience, and the specific services they offer. It may also be helpful to speak with other businesses that have used their services.

Cloud service management involves the oversight, control, administration and maintenance of cloud infrastructure, services and resources. This can apply to public, private and/ or multi-cloud resources. Essentially, cloud service management provides IT teams greater control over their cloud computing environments to keep them scalable and dynamic.

The difference between a managed and unmanaged cloud service is that with a managed cloud service, a MCSP vendor is responsible for taking care of your cloud system and architecture, whereas with unmanaged cloud hosting, it is the responsibility of your IT teams to take care of your organisation’s server setup, management, monitoring, security, backups and performance.

Essentially, the difference is that managed cloud service providers (MCSPs) manage your technology and infrastructure, while cloud service providers (CSPs) offer you access to technology they own. The choice between MCSPs and CSPs often depends on your assessment of your own capabilities, growth plan and business needs.

Managed cloud services provide disaster recovery and, in most cases, better security than unmanaged cloud hosting. Managed cloud services do this by consistently monitoring your cloud activity for anything suspicious and deploying cloud resources to protect your data.

These are the top 7 benefits of managed cloud services:

1) Cost savings

2) Automatic upgrades

3) Disaster recovery

4) Rapid response times

5) Network security

6) Reliable infrastructure

7) Centralised control

It depends on the complexity of your current IT setup and the specific managed cloud services you are considering. A managed cloud service provider can help you assess your needs and plan a smooth transition.

Managed cloud services are typically billed on a pay-as-you-go or subscription basis, with costs based on usage or the services provided.

Fully managed cloud services are cloud services that are handled completely by a cloud service provider using automations. This typically means that you don’t have to take care of setting up and managing machines, patching or backing up. Additionally, these controls give you easy to set up configurations that allow you to decide how you scale and deal with High Availability (HA) and Disaster recovery (DR) situations.