Blog: Cloud Management – The Modern Way

Blog: Cloud Management – The Modern Way

Cloud is quickly becoming integral to the success of many businesses. With Gartner forecasting the worldwide adoption of public Cloud to increase by 17% in 2020 and revenue standing at approximately $266.4 billion, mainstream Cloud is becoming more popular. While the Cloud environment could get more complicated, effective management continues to be the key priority for most organizations to ensure their IT estates are compliant, secure, and efficient.  

While it is crucial for a business to find the right solutions, they also require the right people to help them through the process of envisioning, assessment, planning, and deployment – making the ‘transformation’ a seamless experience. Businesses don’t have a choice to transform or not. The only alternative presented to them is managing transformation effectively or not.

Top Cloud Challenges Include Security, Spend, and Governance

With so many Cloud platforms and distinct business needs, visibility into clouds becomes challenging. Businesses feel they do not know the Cloud’s content, how secure the environment is, the actual costs the company would incur, and if they are meeting all compliance requirements.    

The new era of multi-cloud management will heavily focus on solving problems across cost, security, and governance. “Due to the growing number of workloads in the cloud and the development of hybrid and multi-cloud strategies, enterprises still face severe challenges around security, managing cloud spend and governance,” states Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report. While 83 percent of enterprises indicate that security is a challenge, 82 percent find managing cloud spend challenging, and 79 percent say that governance is a challenge.    

For getting maximum value from Cloud, businesses need a complete picture of the Cloud environment, including billing details, accounts, resources, configurations, permissions, and changes. Effective Cloud management can improve cloud efficiency and security while simultaneously saving costs.

Take a Centralized Approach

As Cloud technology becomes embedded across business processes, more critical skills, costs, and management are needed. Internal IT teams don’t possess the skills to effectively and holistically monitor and maintain a cloud environment.    

In these situations, it is crucial to engage with a Cloud managed services provider to manage cloud security, cost, storage, computing, network, applications, and vendors. Besides Cloud, MSPs also handle monitoring and reporting, performance testing, backup and recovery, and more. Nearly 51 percent of enterprises reported using Cloud managed service providers (MSPs) to manage public cloud use, as per the Flexera 2020 State of The Cloud report.

When a business decides to partner with an MSP; they can:

• Reduce expenses by steering clear of any overlapping services    
• Leverage best-in-class Cloud services through a single provider who understands your business’ needs and a single invoice.    
• Increase productivity with rapid deployment    
• Offer superior 24/7 support and monitoring to minimize downtime and delays.

For an IT Estate Built on Azure, Leverage the Microsoft Cloud Services Partner (CSP) Program

Motifworks has changed the definition and the role of an MNP by demonstrating capabilities in handling support and cloud expertise and having a robust infrastructure for holistic ownership of the business relationship, resulting in a Tier1 CSP partner status from Microsoft.     

What benefits does a business receive from a CSP Partner:

1. Centralized billing for all your cloud needs: A business needs various other services on top of their Cloud needs. For example, licensing and support. Dealing with a CSP reduces the challenges of different invoices for different vendors for their respective services. A CSP partner raises a single invoice and provides consolidated billing for all the services offered with resource-level details on our CSP Portal. They also help the business understand who is using what at what cost on the monthly scheduled calls to get better control over Cloud spends.
2. Competitive Pricing: There are many ways a business can buy Azure. Choosing CSP can open up opportunities to get discounts on the RRP compared with the Pay-As-You-Go and EA purchase model.   
3. Managed Services Support: Managing the workload on Cloud can be confusing sometimes as an internal IT department may not have the required expertise to manage and monitor the cloud environment effectively. In this situation, an organization needs to outsource the management and support of its cloud-based application to a third-party MSP with robust SLA, skillsets, and vast experience in deployment, modernization, and managing the business application environment, Microsoft Azure.
4. Flexibility: Given the growing technology landscape, businesses need to be more agile while responding quickly to the market or competitive conditions. That requires flexible infrastructure, enabling enterprises to deliver services and applications faster. MSPs can respond to traversing demands in real-time so that businesses do not have to worry about system downtime. Be sure to look for an MSP offering advanced services that get the most significant value and scalability out of your partnership.

Give your company the best chance for success

Having the right partner by your side can accelerate digital transformation while strengthening the Cloud infrastructure and resulting in extraordinary business outcomes. Motifworks offer Azure Managed services that includes entire gamut for your cloud computing needs. There is no reason for any IT organization to ‘do it alone’ when dealing with the pace and complexity of Cloud. Our AzureSmart Cloud Architects help businesses with security and governance, managing cloud spending, overcoming lack of resources/expertise, and managing multi-cloud. Speak to the experts!