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Managed cloud services (MCS) make organizations life easier by taking up complete or partial management and control of customer cloud resources.
Enterprisers use cloud services to store information and run applications on cloud ecosystems rather than on locally hosted servers in data centers. This gives businesses freedom from worrying about hardware requirements, space, memory usage and focus only on strategies to grow businesses at a faster pace than its competitors.
A managed cloud service provider or MCSP will take all responsibilities including migration, deployments, optimization, configuration, security, system upgrades and maintenance activities for a cloud native environment.
The purpose of this is to optimize cloud service benefits by MCSP and business can focus on its key initiatives and leave day to day activities management with MCSP.
In this article we will learn more in detail about Managed cloud services, their key characteristics, pros and cons, and how it works?
Managed Cloud Services
In this arrangement businesses outsourced their underlying IT infrastructure and sometimes applications also to 3rd parties. In other words, we can say cloud management as-a-service model. The organizations need not to hire internal staff to manage their cloud resources. Organizations can choose what IT functions they will control and what IT infrastructure functions will be outsourced to MCSP vendors. The chosen service provider has its own infrastructure which they operate on cloud. Cloud computing and cloud deployments are also bundled offerings to help organizations workload management.
Types of Managed Cloud Services
There are three common types of managed cloud services, each focusing on different layers of the cloud computing stack.
IaaS Service
Infrastructure as service as name suggests means underlying infrastructure components such as storage, memory, CPU and connectivity is outsourced from a third party service provider. All ‘Big Three’ Amazon cloud services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google cloud platform (GCP) provide an IaaS service model.
PaaS Service
Platform as a service (PaaS) model provides a ready to go cloud hosting platform for your applications deployment, management and maintenance. All ‘Big Three’ Amazon cloud services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google cloud platform (GCP) provide a PaaS service model.
SaaS Service
Software as a service, as the name indicates, means hosting business applications over cloud for customers to access. It is a subscription-based service again. All infrastructure required to deliver SaaS is managed by a SaaS provider which can take up IaaS or PaaS services for its SaaS solution.
Storage as Service
This is another model, that allows organizations to store and use cloud storage services provided by managed service providers to store and manage organization data. This kind of outsourcing is often done to cut down hardware costs, software costs and staff.
Related: XaaS vs SaaS
Pros and Cons of Managed Cloud Services
Pros
- Centralized management and control – all cloud infrastructure controls are managed from a central console and ease the management
- Scalability – businesses can scale their applications as per the need. Resources can be allocated efficiently.
- Cost savings – organizations save costs as they pay only for what they use.
- Network security – MCSP manages the network security in compliance with regulations and monitors the IT services landscape round the clock.
- Disaster recovery – managed cloud services can quickly recover from downtime and up the infrastructure and make resources available thus minimizing disruptions in business operations.
Cons
- High costs – partnering with an MCSP often results in higher service expenses
- Performance issues during optimization – organizations might have smaller or larger applications in their environment. Some applications function properly and some might not.
- Data in one control – total relying on MCSP means business data exposure and heightened security risk
Key Considerations while choosing Managed Cloud Service Providers
- Vendor lock-in – this is the most common vow among organizations as once you move to the cloud ecosystem you begin to rely on your cloud provider for virtual infrastructure. It becomes costly, complex to switch to another cloud provider which limits the flexibility to some extent. Switching to a multi-cloud strategy for different workloads could be one strategy which needs careful review and selection.
- Limited control – moving to a managed service provider means many aspects of physical and virtual security will be handled by MCSP which in turn means an element of losing complete control over your infrastructure.
- Cost and pricing – comparison of costs and operating model assessment is important while committing to one cloud provider over another. Organizations can choose between pay-as-you-go model or subscription model which is deemed fit.