Why a Cloud Managed Service Provider is your biggest (and best) resource

It’s time to renovate your garden. You’re fed up with the view from your kitchen window as you look outdoors and see a space that passes as usable for the odd barbecue or to kick a ball around in, but you know it isn’t everything it could be. You’ve got a rusty table for two, the fence didn’t survive the last storm, and the weeds are winning the war over your border plants. It’s only taken a couple of summers to get to this point since you last spent hours out there tidying the place up.

You’ve decided it’s time to act. So, do you do it all over again in the hope of achieving a different, longer-lasting outcome? Or do you get the specialists to transform your garden and then maintain its picturesque yet practical state?

If you’re asking for our advice, it’s a no brainer. By bringing in the experts you’ll transform your space in less time, get more for your money, and end up with a garden that looks its best and continues to serve its purpose year after year after year.

Though, we aren’t gardeners. We are service providers though, and there are similarities. Rather than transforming your garden, let’s look at the same scenario through the lens of transforming your IT estate – after all, there may be a few weeds in there, too.

Let’s put a Cloud Managed Service Provider (CMSP) in the place of the gardeners, and look and the differences they’ll make in your cloud journey.

The obvious impacts…

There are a few benefits of working with an expert CMSP that are immediately apparent. An experienced Provider will be backed by years, if not decades, of insight, knowledge, and know-how that you simply won’t be able to compete with, no matter how much research you do.

That experience will be on-hand and available to your business around the clock, whenever you need it, and is backed up by other areas of expertise that you may not need right now, but could benefit from in the near future. That unlocks a level of scalability for your business that you simply don’t have with in-house resourcing.

And while yes, this level of expertise comes at a cost, one of the most eye-catching benefits of an effective CMSP is in the value and cost savings that they can deliver. By optimising the products you use and the services you receive, as well as unlocking otherwise inaccessible funding packages from technology providers like Microsoft, CMSPs are often a much more cost-effective way of accessing the skills and insights you need, especially in comparison to the amount of time, effort and capital that would need to be invested in-house to achieve a result that even came close.

…and the less obvious

Beyond the round-the-clock support and assistance, access to additional skills/resources, cost savings, improved scalability, enhanced security and compliance, and increased reliability, there are a whole host of benefits that aren’t quite so apparent.

Firstly, there’s the unrivalled insight into new technologies. In a world that is constantly evolving, having a CMSP that is up-to-date and informed on your industry’s latest trends and technologies is crucial. A good CMSP will provide that; a great CMSP will have close ties with technology providers, like Microsoft, and provide early insight and access to new features and upcoming changes to ensure you stay at the forefront of innovation.

They’ll also bring cross-industry experience to the table, as well as an expansive network of partners and providers to help you deliver on your cloud strategy. They’ll know the best security providers, or the connectivity providers that are best suited to your business, and have existing relationships with them that can be leveraged to negotiate deals and discounts. After all, it’s often who you know, rather than what you know.

Lastly, having an outsider’s perspective can prove invaluable. You’ve been looking out at the same garden – sorry, IT estate – all day every day, so the chances of you identifying the biggest areas of concern is slim. You’ll see what you’ve always seen. This is also beneficial in dealing with disputes between internal stakeholders, which can often lead to delays, inefficiencies, and suboptimal outcomes.

Not only will a good CMSP provide that outsider perspective, but they’ll bring that viewpoint into your organisation with a view to upskill your existing team and share its insights and learnings. This creates a two-way relationship between provider and customer that serves to benefit everyone.

Creating the perfect garden

We’ve come along way from our convoluted garden analogy, but we’re standing by it. In order for your garden, or your IT estate, to be shipshape, to flourish, and to best serve its purpose, you need an expert on hand. By engaging with a CMSP, adding your business context to those conversations, and undertaking bespoke assessments and workshops, you’ll soon realise that they are your greatest and most valuable resource. Nothing else comes close.

Just like that you can wave goodbye to your grimy garden, and instead look out into a space that is bustling with wildlife, bursting with colour, and brimming with possibilities for the seasons that lay ahead.

This IT utopia sounds a little too good to be true, doesn’t it? Well, we’re here to show you it isn’t. As one of Microsoft’s leading partners, and an Azure Expert Managed Service Provider, Cloud Direct can provide the resource your organisation needs to revolutionise its IT estate and achieve everything we’ve outlined.

Get in touch with a member of the team and we can help put everything we’ve outlined into the context of your business, and help you explore the value of a great CMSP.