Over the years, cloud computing has made its way into small and medium businesses (SMBs) as they’ve started realising issues with on-premises infrastructure. While undertaking the digital transformation process, most SMBs will face some tricky questions on how to transition to start with and manage their infrastructure afterwards.
Common and perfectly sensible questions from SMBs that we hear all the time include:
- Should we train our existing staff to perform the transition? (Or should we get consultants?)
- How do we make sure that we have, in fact, defined the most efficient architecture to meet our business needs? (After all, we haven’t done this before.)
- And how do we know that the architecture we’ve defined as efficient (see above) is the most cost-effective solution? (We don’t want to end up crippled by unnecessary costs.)
- If you’re an SMB, the most important thing to focus on in this situation is the business need.
However, there are some points consider if pondering a DIY approach
- How much will it cost you to train your staff to perform the activities needed (think course fees and resource times?)
- Will the training provide your people with enough expertise to efficiently complete the work at hand and with the least obstacles? (Remembering that too little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.)
- Will the approach that you’ve taken turn out to be the most efficient and cost-effective option?
- Working with a cloud-first Managed Service Provider (MSP) will remove a lot of uncertainty and risk from the above approach. The fundamental principles which have led to the mass adoption of cloud computing services are the exact reasons why you should consider engaging an MSP.
Key Principles
Availability
An MSP assumes the risk of making sure the required resources are available when you need them. So, when you lose key staff, it’s no longer an issue. They don’t walk away with the knowledge you need to keep things running. Your MSP has business processes, business continuity procedures, lifecycle management plans in place.
Scalability and elasticity
Need to make significant changes? Need to modify the architecture to include new services or diverse requirements? With an MSP by your side, you don’t have to wait to hire or train the staff for specific services, modules, or scenarios. Instead, your MSP can leverage a large resource pool of on-hand experts - all with the knowledge and years of experience harnessed from multiple engagements. So, you don’t need to wait around; you can get your desired business solution faster.
Reliability and experience
Experience counts. An MSP offers reliable advice on the most efficient and cost-effective solution for your business needs. It utilises the expertise, exposure, learnings gathered from multiple engagements. So, you’re not limited by what your people know, or expose your business to risk.
Economies of scale
An MSP invests in continual training to develop their employee capabilities, provides the best tools, and maintains a resource pool of personnel with different skill and knowledge levels. And as your MSP grows, so does its knowledge base. As a result, it can identify the right person in their team to accomplish the work the most efficiently, reducing the overall cost.
Fusion5, and you
Fusion5 Managed Services gives you and your business access to a team of trained, experienced experts on an as-required basis. We can support your organisation with BAU tasks and activities. We aim to give you the capacity and focus to successfully get your critical and crucial projects over the line. Or bolster your team with the expertise you may not have in-house. Or you can outsource your cloud migration or a security upgrade project, or an enterprise architecture review.
We can help you with your cloud migration and optimisation, enterprise architecture, managed applications, cyber security, identity management and health checks.
