Postponing Legacy IT Replacement Can Cause a Lot of Headaches
Many of you may remember the old Fram oil filter commercial from the 1970s where the auto mechanic uttered the phrase, “You can pay me now, or you can pay me later”. The mechanic was implying that the customer could make a small investment in maintaining their car today, with the low-cost investment in a Fram oil filter, or pay the mechanic a LOT more money at a later point to fix the car. Later, of course, means when you had more serious, not to mention more expensive, car problems due to lack of regular ongoing preventative maintenance with quality auto parts.
The same principle applies to digital transformation. Putting off modernizing your IT environment might save a little money in the short run, but sooner or later you will end up paying the piper for that procrastinating decision. Frequent downtime, lack of network visibility and slow, reactive response to system malfunctions and failures can significantly impact revenue growth and productivity due to ongoing business disruptions.
Cloud computing has become the de facto choice of technology to help organizations leapfrog into the future. It enables organizations to gain central visibility into their cloud-based network systems, applications and devices to ensure reliable uptime and performance. And with rising cybersecurity threats and the surge of a remote work-from-home workforce, a managed cloud environment can provide the agility and reliable network performance to accommodate an “always on” digital world. It also can simplify how organizations monitor, manage and support their IT operations.
Managed Cloud Hosting to the Rescue
Today’s smart organizations are increasingly partnering with managed cloud hosting providers like Magna5 as a path to modernize their IT environment by bypassing the large capital expenses of purchasing and rebuilding their own data center. In addition, organizations are looking to avoid the continuous drain on their IT staff in managing and maintaining complex hardware and application infrastructures.
With managed cloud hosting, you can go live in days, sometimes even hours. You only pay for the computing resources that you need. The cloud’s unique characteristics in providing unlimited, on-demand computing resources changes your whole business dynamics. You now have flexibility. You have speed. You have IT operational efficiency. You have simplicity.
Let’s take a look how managed cloud hosting can leapfrog your organization into the future.
- Drive down costs – Predictable pay-as-you-go or monthly subscription costs let’s you innovate without a large capital expense. You buy computing capacity on a needs-only basis. The managed service provider manages and maintains the equipment and keeps it optimized and secure. No longer do you need to worry about the cost of data center leasing, HVAC, power and other physical plant expenses.
- Reliable availability – Fail-safe redundancies are built-in a managed cloud to ensure uptime and continuity of access. Downtime or slow performance are almost non-existent. The managed service provider continuously monitors the health of your IT environment to ensure no disruptions and reliable availability from any device, anywhere, anytime.
- On-demand agility – The nature of a dynamic marketplace moves at a rapid pace. You will need the ability to pivot quickly. Whether it’s identifying favorable market conditions, engaging new customer segments, leveraging the resources and expertise of your business partners, or simply streamlining your operations to shed technical debt and outdated workflows, you want the agility to jump on new opportunities and minimize waste. A managed cloud empowers you to respond to changing conditions quickly
- Improve responsiveness – Seasonal sales cycles or changes in customer needs require flexibility to add or reduce computing capacity without the hassle of fixed assets. With a managed cloud, a boost in computer capacity or data storage doesn’t require a major data center upgrade. If you need to set up new kiosks or add more staffing at multiple locations, it’s a point-and-click experience.
- Better accessibility – Data can be accessed from mobile devices, laptops and notebooks from any location with a managed cloud. Especially with today’s remote workforce, employees can be more productive with anywhere, anytime access to applications, datasets, collaboration tools, and other resources in a cloud environment.
