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What you need to know about the IT services industry in Davis
In the old days, companies, no matter how small, had to find the money to pay upfront for all their IT infrastructure and then find (and keep) the staff needed to take care of it. This was a major expense and inconvenience for them and the IT services industry essentially developed to make their life easier. Here is a brief guide to what you need to know about the IT services industry in Davis.
Managed hosting and the public cloud provide infrastructure as a service
Few companies have anything to gain by owning their own IT infrastructure. In fact for many companies, especially SMBs, it’s massively more hassle than it’s worth. It’s simpler and often more cost-effective to lease/rent what you need when you need it (infrastructure-as-a-service) and that is basically what managed hosting and the public cloud are all about.
Managed hosting is an IT service that makes it possible for companies to lease serviced infrastructure for their own private use. Typically a managed hosting service will take care of everything up to and including the operating system on the servers, so the client only has to deal with their own applications and data. Some managed hosts are actually starting to offer to assist with applications and data as well. This is usually an add-on service but can be very convenient.
These days, the main use for managed hosting is to create private clouds, however, it can also be used to maintain a data-center until a cloud migration can be completed (or a combination of both).
The basics of public clouds
Public clouds are simply managed hosting services where the infrastructure is made available for communal use, although each user has their own private space within it. The advantage of this approach is that it allows for literally instant scalability. You can add and remove resources with just a few mouse-clicks. The disadvantage of this approach is that it can complicate security and that it can actually end up increasing costs instead of decreasing them.
The issue with security in the public cloud is not so much the fact that users (or “tenants”) are completely dependent on their provider for external security. Many SMBs would have had to employ an external vendor to take care of this anyway and the mainstream cloud providers all do a very good job of it. Nor is it the fact that, in principle, data could be leaked between users, although this is a concern. The main security issue is actually managing security at the client-side without full visibility of what the platform is doing.
In the public cloud, security is a shared responsibility. The vendor protects their platform (and insulates users from each other) and each client needs to protect their own data from internal threats and external threats caused by security issues at their side. The client’s problem is that they do not have full insight into what the provider is doing, rather ironically for security reasons.
This can create some challenges, but fortunately IT services providers are growing increasingly capable of dealing with them. That said, for the time being at least, it may be best to keep sensitive data in a private cloud.
Public clouds are often marketed as a very cost-effective solution for SMBs and indeed they can be, but only if you are scrupulous about ensuring that you always spin down services once you have finished using them. If you don’t then the public cloud can wind up being very expensive. Ideally, you will also make use of discounted pricing offers such as reserved instances and spot instances.
Managed IT services takes care of predictable tasks for a fixed fee
Managed IT services vendors take care of any and all regular maintenance tasks. They give SMBs the security of knowing that their infrastructure will be properly maintained without them having to do any more than pay a monthly bill. Managed IT services vendors have adapted to the cloud-first world and can help SMBs manage both private clouds and their use of public clouds. They can also help to maintain any legacy infrastructure SMBs need to keep running for the time being.
IT support is there to implement projects and solve problems
Officially, IT support is there to provide short-term support for specific needs. In the old days, they were the break/fix people. These days, they still deal with break/fix work but the managed IT services industry has done a lot to reduce this, so, now most IT support vendors are probably more focussed on project work.
If you’d like to speak to a reputable and experienced IT services provider in Davis, please click here now to contact Salient IT.
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