Traditionally, enterprises invested in IT teams and in-house infrastructure. But digital transformation brought a paradigmatic shift in business operations. No company can afford to get stuck with their legacy systems. They have to adopt proactive IT measures with the help of competent MSPs.

Yes, managed service providers or MSPs are the next big thing. These outsourcing partners remotely manage the company’s IT assets and end-user systems. Their services include server maintenance, cloud storage, data back-up, and disaster recovery. If you are an SME, you can benefit from network monitoring, authentication, system administration, and infrastructure management. 

But such a third party’s role leads to concerns on security and trust. However, the market value of MSPs is US$200 to US$350 million. So, be careful and choose a reliable partner to enjoy these unbeatable benefits:

1. Improve Core Competency

A business relies on IT services to assist their primary operations. Its core competencies include product innovation, effective marketing, and customer service. The company also has goals and a vision to expand and achieve profits. These key activities should not be side-lined for IT needs.

Managed service providers offer flexible and scalable options to the client. You can choose a suitable service model based on current needs and budget limits. The in-house staff will benefit immensely as they can focus on the core strengths. They do not get distracted or overwhelmed by IT tasks.

2. Cost-Saving Effort

Every business has to upgrade its IT tools and technology in the long run. But the costs of training, installation, and onboarding can be very high. Also, the company will still get stuck with a capital expenditure model. It will not be able to shift to an operating expenses model due to rigidity.

In contrast, MSPs offer scalable models with service-level agreements. You will no longer have to worry about labor costs and hidden service expenses. The management can also take bold decisions to reinvest the savings or expand the business into new territories.

3. Utilize Superior Talent

On-premise technology updates are expensive, time-consuming, and unproductive. You have to configure the new systems and achieve efficient integration. Such complex activities require talented IT professionals with experience. Besides, a large number of costly resources have to get allotted.

With MSPs, you can overcome the problem of hiring and assigning resources. The HR team does not have to worry about locating suitable talent. The service provider charges a flat, monthly rate, and designates first-rate professionals. These experts handle technical, architectural, functional, and systemic issues easily.

4. Scale with Ease

Cutting-edge business IT system is intelligent and AI-driven. A cloud-based solution offers dynamic applications for customer relationship management (CRM). It also provides predictive analytics to assist the enterprise in planning and managing its resources efficiently. 

The development of technology is continuous. Thus, technologies of today can become obsolete tomorrow. Therefore, it becomes a capital-intensive process to scale up an operation. However, since MSPs take care of the resources and technologies, it becomes possible to scale up or down with ease. The MSPs give further impetus through technology integration and process optimization. You can choose a scalable model with proactive monitoring and service upgrades. These solutions ensure business continuity by implementing the IT changes in real-time.

5. Continuous Support

The in-house IT teams are small in size, and they have fixed working hours and resources. But a large MSP offers 24X7 online customer support. A reliable company has technical and business experts working round the clock, and you can receive low-cost, flexible assistance irrespective of the time zone. Besides, the MSP offers on-site, emergency, or weekend support options for an additional fee.

6. Minimize System Fails

The managed services offer reliable, remote monitoring of IT systems. The provider also proactively manages and pre-empts various problems. Their experts detect, diagnose, and troubleshoot issues at an early stage. They also have data back-up and disaster recovery strategies in place. So, your business can flourish as the network and system downtime are effectively lower.

7. Personalized Point of Contact

Remote assistance does not mean a drop in standards or quality assurance. The MSP assigns a dedicated team with a customer success manager (CSM), a singular, reliable middleman, who understands all your business and technical requirements to the tee. This CSM helps you enjoy personalized service. Besides, secondary contact points are readily available to replace absentee CSMs at any time.

8. Stay Secure and Compliant

Data is your asset, and MSPs keep it secure and confidential. The storage and access privileges for sensitive information are competently under control. There is no litigation scope as all the rules, regulations, and compliance standards get fully implemented. Sufficient precautions will be in place beforehand to enforce corporate compliance-based on local, state, and national laws.

CloudGen takes the complete responsibility of Managed services where we assist our clients in assuring the maximum productivity within the short deadlines. We implement smart methods to cut down expenses and simplify complex processes.

Modern enterprises deliver business services using Information Technology. They have to satisfy the customers to stay profitable and competitive. But the IT services, software, and systems also require maintenance and upgrades. Earlier, the companies would separate software development from IT operations. But contemporary needs led to the creation of DevOps philosophy, tools, and practices.

DevOps brings a company’s build and services teams together. In large enterprises, there will be thousands of employees and multiple IT groups. The Enterprise DevOps culture can put them on the same page to ensure business continuity. The products, best practices, and approaches get enlarged or scaled up to eliminate blind spots and deliver results within a time frame.

Significant challenges

A multi-national or retail giant enterprise deals with billions of dollars and huge daily inventories. Such an enterprise relies on agile techniques, end-to-end automation, and team collaboration. But there is a constant tussle between product and services groups. Yes, they use tools like Puppet, SaltStack, Chef, and Ansible to manage modules, configurations, and servers. 

The fast releases, insightful feedback, and continuous delivery and testing are helpful. But, introducing new features with a high level of service standards is very challenging.

• Incident Control

New releases have to get carefully controlled to prevent problems and incidents. A modular process with a single channel can be helpful to manage every minute change. ITSM solutions like BMC remedy are useful for network services and application support teams. But the continuous deployment group may not be very happy.

• Approval Process

On-demand development with self-service deployments is enticing. But in large companies, the application teams have to go through advisory boards, approval, and governance gates.

• Lack of Automation

Heavy-duty software works in tandem with massive environments to ensure service reliability. Yes, the cloud infrastructure holds a lot of promise. But planning, preparing, and approving a new environment is a complex process.

• Orchestration

Large enterprises have to release new builds into multiple departments simultaneously. But such large-scale deployment requires orchestrating multiple, disparate teams to ensure efficiency. Also, robust policies and transparent standards are essential to enforcing full compliance along the existing or new chain of command.

Viable Solutions

Enterprise DevOps will succeed if there are standardization and automation of collaborative approaches. The work culture also has to get transformed through friendly, informal practices. Infusing AI technologies into both service and process management is also a viable strategy.

Data analytics and efficient communications are also necessary to achieve digital transformation. They assist in overcoming the organizational challenges through innovation and predictability:

1. Strategic Shifts

In traditional DevOps, the application development teams use tools like Puppet and Chef. They achieve exemplary configuration and deliver before the deadline. Besides, they raise the bar of automated builds by addressing the IT team requirements. The co-ordination activities, however, get handled with proficiency and promptness by the release managers.

Gradually, a systematic thinking practice emerges to reduce adverse effects. There will be a higher level of understanding of resilient product deployment and business continuity. Superior standardization in the automation of tools and approaches also comes forth. The disconnect due to individual pipelines and subjective DevOps interpretations gets further reduced.

2. Change Management

The business priorities, consumer market tastes, and technologies keep changing. If a business wishes to scale up to the level of Enterprise DevOps, change has to get efficiently managed. The requests, build, and release processes have to be transparent. They have to comply with the policy and adhere to all inter-departmental formalities. The old and new requirements have to get bridged dynamically.

The change also has to factor in innovative capabilities such as integrated tools, hybrid environments, and cloud infrastructure. Unlike DevOps, enterprise-level scaling maintains the developer and operation team interfaces. It just minimizes process-heavy interactions to speed up software delivery and release.

3. Risk Reduction

The Enterprise DevOps approach reduces various risks associated with large-scale releases. The teams adhere to common standards and make deadline predictions very accurate. The operations teams get entrusted with sophisticated tools to set-up complex environments and automation for everyone’s benefit. 

They can supply a standard set of virtual machines (VMs) for the build. Also, the central IT team writes baseline scripts in Puppet and Chef. The application developers rely on them to speed-up software development for a specific server environment. They also ensure continuity to testing and staging while operation groups take the automation forward to the production environment. Thus, boundaries get crossed without compromising the overall control.