Managed Cloud services, 90% of companies have adopted them

Cloud tenant management may have remained an option in the early days of the Cloud. This is no longer the case. Migration to the Cloud means continuous operation. And that means on-call duty and multiple skills. 

The Cloud never sleeps

Whether adopted for full administration, co-management or on a limited perimeter basis, the operated Cloud is a boon for organisations that do not have either the resources or the desire to dedicate teams to the ongoing supervision of Cloud services.

It has to be said that Cloud console management is all the more important because businesses and public services are increasingly working 24/7 with the Cloud. From e-commerce and car rental to energy, industry and healthcare, Cloud solutions have accelerated the pace of consumption and usage, breaking down the barriers of time. 

Companies of a certain size that have deployed a massive move to the Cloud and moved away from their On-Premise data centres obviously have an obligation to ensure that their teams are able to upgrade their skills in the Cloud. 

But for the vast majority of companies in transition, the operated Cloud offering, particularly 24/7, is a major asset and very often the main argument for purchasing, for all their critical environments. A provider of operated Cloud services will always be more affordable than creating an on-call team of 4 to 5 DBAs, with multiple specialisms. 

Managed services vs. operated Cloud, what are the differences? 

What's the difference? The Cloud. Cloud tenant management is not directly included in managed services. Managed services involve the maintenance in operational conditions, supervision, administration and operation of an infrastructure or database (as well as its governance). 
Without an operated cloud option, and therefore without the service provider's ability to monitor and manage the cloud console independently, it is up to the business to do this work.

In the typical case of a backup error, even when the alert is given, the measures to be taken may be delayed, leading to a slowdown or even a halt in production.

In this sense, while the Cloud operated in no way alters the services linked to managed services, it complements the service by providing a separate team with specific Cloud skills, as well as the responsiveness that is essential for managing the tenant, in terms of all the network, access and storage aspects linked to the Cloud.

Supervision in the operated Cloud

The Operated Cloud requires a monitoring solution to be installed in the company. As the cornerstone of the entire monitoring chain, it is from this tool that the on-call team can react in good time and the day team can make any additional corrections and recommendations that may be necessary. 

The first point of attention is downtimes initiated at the request of the CSP, i.e. updates requiring the environment to be shut down or restarted completely. Announced by email, these alerts often go unnoticed in companies. A provider of operated Cloud services continuously polls this type of information to warn and plan with its customer the measures to be taken, in order to protect it from untimely production stoppages. 

In the same vein, operated Cloud services enable the implementation of hybrid supervision. Some services, particularly in PaaS, can only be supervised via the CSP's Cloud console. An operated Cloud service provider can add to its internal monitoring those elements that cannot be attacked (such as log files) by a monitoring probe. A significant advantage of hybrid monitoring is that you can use the CSP's free services and get rid of the more expensive ones by opting for the provider's solution.

Finally, security. Authentication and access management on Cloud services environments can be operated on demand. This is all the more interesting given that CSPs are so lavish with security solutions that companies can have great difficulty sorting them out according to their real needs. With the support of a Cloud service provider operating here, a compliant security strategy can be built and applied without going overboard.  

Recommendations, planning and disaster recovery

More generally, the operated Cloud services are designed to support companies as they develop their Cloud and the way they use it. Intimately linked to FinOps expertise, the recommendations delivered largely deal with the intense activity of the CSPs. With new services becoming available on a regular basis, changes in pricing - many of which departments are unaware of - and the consolidation of offerings, supervision is also a question of monitoring and alerting, so that companies know how to seize every opportunity to reduce their Cloud bill. 

It is also a guarantee of better visibility of future needs in terms of system resources, CPU, ram and storage. With operated Cloud services, companies benefit from trend estimates and advice based on their consumption and practices. 

Finally, when appropriate, a Cloud Disaster Recovery Plan can be included as part of such a service, with the primary advantage of annual operational tests and a test methodology that in-house teams often lack.