Recent events that led to power blackouts in Texas and other parts of the US have highlighted the need for businesses to have a solid network redundancy and disaster recovery system in place. By making critical IT systems redundant, organizations can withstand power outages, winter storms, floods, hurricanes, and even volcanos!
One way businesses can achieve network redundancy is by incorporating cloud technology into their overarching IT strategy.
Leverage the Cloud to Protect Your Business
Cloud adoption has seen consistent growth over the past several years, with worldwide end user spending on public cloud services forecasted to grow 18.4% in 2021 to total $304.9 billion, up from $257.5 billion in 2020, according to Gartner.
There is no doubt that business leaders should be utilizing the cloud if they’re not already. Here are three key motivators to partner with a managed cloud service provider (CSP) to proactively protect their organization.
Backup and Disaster Recovery Solutions (BDR)
It’s not a matter of if – but when – a business will experience downtime due to a natural or manmade disaster, such as the recent power outages across the US. Because data is at the core of every organizations’ operational strategy, the core functions of a business can’t succeed if critical data were to be lost.
Without a comprehensive BDR solution in place, it will be extremely difficult to recover critical data and applications in a timely manner. This can have a detrimental impact on a business and the effects can be far-reaching, including technical downtime, reduced productivity, loss of profitability, and much more.
A managed cloud service provider can offer insight and direction when it comes to adopting a BDR solution that accommodates specific business criteria such as Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) standards. Furthermore, they will be able to implement, monitor, and ultimately manage these solutions for an organization to preserve business continuity in unpredictable situations.
A managed cloud service provider utilizes the public cloud which is hosted in redundant data centers and backed up to multiple locations, adding another layer of security and redundancy.
Not Sure Where to Start With Your Cloud Solution?
Cloud Configuration Expertise
As many as two-thirds of businesses and enterprises view cloud security as the biggest impediment to adoption. Indeed, there can be cybersecurity issues in the cloud, with one of the largest – and often most overlooked – issues being the misconfiguration of cloud environments.
Nearly all misconfiguration issues in the cloud go unnoticed, exposing enterprises and other organizations to an increased risk of undetected, malware-less data breaches. In fact, some of the more prominent recent breaches involved at least one aspect of cloud-native breaches – breaches that take advantage of misconfiguration potential in the cloud, rather than malware.
However, if cloud infrastructure is configured correctly and monitored for changes, its security posture can actually be improved over traditional on-premise infrastructure. Partnering with a managed cloud service provider who invests in ongoing development, training, and innovation in the cloud is an extremely important first step. It is imperative the provider is capable of configuring clients’ cloud environments according to industry benchmarks and compliance standards and is able to keep track of changes to critical controls in the cloud, including the ability to react to unauthorized changes.
Ongoing Monitoring & Management
Even the most secure public cloud providers like Microsoft Azure and AWS require ongoing management by cloud and security experts to ensure resilience and security. This is perhaps where a managed cloud service provider partnership benefits companies most.
Managed cloud solutions support your entire team with round-the-clock monitoring and management that keeps your cloud infrastructure running smoothly. Shifting this responsibility to a managed cloud service provider not only allows for heightened security and a prompt resolution by the provider should a misconfiguration or other issue arise, but also reduces stress on in-house resources and frees them up to focus on other business initiatives for the company.
Additionally, managed cloud service providers regularly evaluate clients’ cloud infrastructure to ensure their environment is optimized from a licensing and consumption perspective, providing potential cost savings compared to an unmanaged environment with runaway spending and shadow-IT.
Start Securing Your Business Today
In summation, MSPs can serve as a business’s all-in-one IT partner or act as an extension of their in-house teams to increase organizational efficiency. If you are a business leader looking for ways to improve your IT solution, contacting an MSP is a great place to start.
Buchanan Technologies has been providing mid-tier and enterprise-level clients across North America with innovative IT services and customized solutions since 1988, including helpdesk services, remote IT support, managed IT solutions, and more. Contact us for more information and to receive a free, no-obligation quote for your IT needs.
Interested in Learning More?