Why Choose Managed Cloud Services?
It’s 2023, and it’s time to embrace the cloud. According to Zippia, 94% of enterprises now use cloud services. 92% of businesses have a multi-cloud strategy, and 67% of enterprise infrastructure is now cloud-based. This has meant that the global cloud computing industry is now worth over US$500 billion. If you haven’t adopted a cloud-based approach to work, it’s highly likely that your competitors have. Gone are the days of being limited due to your physical infrastructure or geographical location. In 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, an unsurprisingly large percentage of businesses (61% to be exact), migrated their entire workload/operations to the cloud.
Share of Corporate Data Stored In The Cloud Over Time
Managed cloud services enable you to work seamlessly across different devices, prevent unnecessary storage of data that could be subject to security breaches, and enhance the remote/hybrid working experience that we have all come to know and love in recent years. Cloud migration can be simple, time-efficient, and inexpensive when done right, and businesses can reap the rewards of moving to the cloud quickly in today’s world. According to CloudZero, cloud migration can take just 2-4 months for a medium-sized operation. This includes migrating all data, documentation, emails, and even conducting staff training around the new platform. Further, as the pandemic showed us, many businesses can further accelerate this process if they so choose, since many companies migrated their whole operation to the cloud in under a month during the most intensely-regulated parts of 2020.
What’s the difference between a Managed Cloud Service and a CRM?
We’re so glad you asked. Where a Customer Relationship Manager enables you to manage, market, invoice, communicate with, and sell to your customers – a managed cloud service sits above this as a means by which your business can operate without the need for a physical server setup, or an in-house desktop service. Cloud services such as Microsoft Azure enable administrators to migrate remote desktop services (RDS) and Windows server desktops to various devices.
Why Choose Azure?
So it’s clear that having a cloud-based system is imperative in the postpandemic world, however, why is Azure so important, and what makes it so special? Further, why should you have a managed Azure cloud service? For starters, 95% of the Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft Azure for their cloud infrastructure needs. That’s an overwhelming majority, and coupled with the recent migration to cloud services as a whole, it’s clear that there is a significant trend towards using a Microsoft solution. However, many businesses may not have the resources, technical expertise or time to migrate their infrastructure to Azure, and most don’t have the benefit of an in-house team to optimise, moderate, and manage their cloud service once it has gone live.
What Makes Azure so Special
In a nutshell, the main benefits of choosing Microsoft Azure include:
- Extremely secure, scalable, and user-friendly.
- Weekly updates to maintain security and improve functionality.
- Seamless ease of use with .NET coding language.
- Consistent updates to the list of supported coding languages.
- Support for Linux OS.
- Support for open-source coding languages such as PHP and all major open-source coding languages.
- Azure DevOps enables up to five people to have user accounts for free.
- In-built ticketing system that allows direct communication for Microsoft support.
- Azure Boards for easy project management.
- Azure Repo as a repository for code.
Azure is a holistic, one-stop shop for all of your cloud managed service needs, and once your business is fully migrated, you can enjoy peace of mind knowing that your infrastructure is secure, your employees have a userfriendly system, and your operations are scalable.
The Hurdles and Challenges of Cloud Migration
Unfortunately, a Forrester report conducted in 2022 concluded that many companies attempting cloud migration fail due to inefficiencies and inexperience around:
- Maintaining data integrity during transfers.
- Establishing and sticking to costs/budgets.
- Maintaining confidentiality and security.
- Cloud compatibility for their existing systems.
- Scalability of the solution they chose.
- Multiple cloud options and lack of knowledge regarding which solution works best.
A 2020 O'Reilly survey also found that many businesses with the multi - phase migration of of applications, the upfront and short-term opportunity costs of doing so, and further – balancing current and future demands to meet the expected return on investment.
