An IDC study (IDC: “Managed Services: Ensuring Enterprise Transformation to Hybrid IT,” October, 2015) identified the following three areas where businesses were utilizing managed services as a means to transform.
Business agility and adaptation
A managed services provider can ensure agility to adapt to market dynamics. Analytics are key here. If data shows underutilization of a server or application, adjustments can be made quickly. The ability to scale up or down is beneficial for flexible workloads. In addition, a managed service provider enables quick access to new or updated technology. The primary options include Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). If you are utilizing cloud services for hosting hardware or software, the provider will handle system maintenance, backup and updates.
Optimizing productivity and performance
Whether you need man power for a spike in processing, or to off-load your data center to a cloud environment, managed services allows your internal team to focus on strategic initiatives. Instead of being bogged down with the day-to-day maintenance, backups and patches, IT resources can be utilized to explore process improvements or other strategic projects. A cloud service provider can install patches and updates in a matter of minutes versus the time it may take your internal staff to push out the updates across a diverse workforce, eliminating any significant downtime.
Access to “hybrid” IT service delivery and management
This hybrid IT environment utilizes traditional labor-based services as well as cloud services. The IDC study indicated that organizations found value in a managed service provider who could offer labor-based services as well as cloud-based services. This hybrid set up ensures end-to-end management of all services.
Finding the right blend of in-house and managed services to transform your business may take some trial and error. A reputable managed service provider can guide you through the process and provide analytics through an easy-to-read dashboard.
What is Your Tipping Point?
Each day organizations are moving to a cloud-based infrastructure and managing it themselves. The IDC reports that 70 percent of U.S. enterprises project that by 2018 they will have 50 percent of their internal IT environment operating as a private cloud. (“Managed Services: Ensuring Enterprise Transformation to Hybrid IT,” October, 2015)
While making the move to cloud-based computing is in line with transformational business goals, there are also risks involved. Can your current IT staff effectively support the high level of service required of cloud environments – 99.99 percent availability? Is cloud management going to further bog down your IT staff and prevent them from developing new strategic initiatives? What is your tipping point for considering a service provider to support your IT needs, including cloud computing? The right service provider can provide skills, processes and resources that exceed your in-house capabilities.
Capital Bank of Haiti (CBH) is an example of an organization realizing that a MSP could provide the best solution for its data center back-up and recovery. Capital Bank needed a backup solution established somewhere that would not be affected by the natural disasters that might strike the island. That way, if the systems were hit and rendered non-operational, the integrity of the information and their ability to service their customers and shareholders would remain intact. CBH needed a solution that could guarantee high availability and disaster recovery.
“Doing it ourselves was not an option,” Smith Fleurantin, Assistant Vice President and Director of Technology and Communications at Capital Bank of Haiti, said. Considering the expense and resources it would take to build a duplicate datacenter, Smith knew that this was something that a managed service provider could help with.
Capital Bank of Haiti acknowledged its tipping point and turned to Flagship Solutions Group. Flagship is a seamless extension of CBH’s internal team, relieving them of the workload they do not want to handle in-house. For Capital Bank of Haiti, Flagship was able to take care of everything for them, leaving them only with the peace of mind knowing that if anything were to happen, the backup environment could take over right where they left off.
As a managed services industry leader, Flagship can provide the following services to help organizations meet their transformation goals:
- Cloud Services
- Disaster Recovery/High Availability
- Endpoint Management
- IBM i Cloud
- IBM i Disaster Recovery/High Availability
- Contract Management
Flagship is equipped to assist you in managing your infrastructure by supplementing your staff, supporting your environment, hosting a primary or alternate DR site or completely managing your environment for you. Whether your company is implementing new applications, upgrading existing applications, or migrating/outsourcing to other applications, Flagship will be there to help you.
Schedule a consultation today to learn more about how Flagship can make a difference for your business.
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