IT Services Folsom
What you need to know about IT services in Folsom
For many SMBs (and even larger organizations), basic IT infrastructure is now essentially a utility just like electricity and water. It’s a need, not a competitive differentiator. This means there’s usually nothing to be gained by managing it yourself. In fact, it can be just setting yourself up for all kinds of hassle which could disrupt your core business. It usually makes much more sense just to hand the task over to expert IT services providers in Folsom. Here’s what you need to know about them.
If you’re working in the public cloud, you still need to think about security
Some SMBs, especially younger and/or smaller ones may never have used anything other than the public cloud and this is entirely understandable. Public cloud services offer “on-demand resources”. This makes them both massively flexible and extremely cost-effective, exactly what SMBs need. Reputable cloud platforms also offer a high degree of security against external threats of all descriptions. This includes anything from natural disasters to cyberattacks.
What public cloud providers do not do, however, is secure each user against threats from within their organization, or threats caused as a result of lack of security within their organization. It is down to each client (or “tenant”) to secure their own accesses and monitor their staff’s use of the public cloud platform to ensure that they are behaving appropriately.
The public-cloud platforms do usually provide a variety of tools to assist their clients with this, plus there are often other ones you can buy from third-party providers. These are, however, only any good if you have the knowledge and resources to use them effectively. Many SMBs do not and in practical terms, they gain nothing by acquiring them. It makes far more sense for the average SMB just to hand this task over to a managed IT security partner with experience in this area.
Managed hosting is often the most cost-effective way to set up a private cloud
Public cloud services are available to anyone with the money to use them. If you want a private service, you have to arrange it yourself. In the old days, this meant buying all the infrastructure you needed and setting it up either in-house or with a colocation partner. Colocation vendors simply offer a secure location for your equipment and a guaranteed supply of power and internet. You are responsible for buying, installing, maintaining and managing all your own hardware (or hiring another vendor to do it for you).
Colocation has largely fallen out of favor as proper managed hosting is massively more convenient and very cost-effective. With managed hosting you lease serviced infrastructure.
This has two huge benefits for SMBs. First of all, it eliminates the need to make expensive, up-front purchases (and deal with the depreciation). Secondly, it eliminates the need to make specific arrangements for the installation, maintenance and management of the hardware. The managed hosting vendor takes care of everything up to (and usually including) the operating system on the server. This means that the client just has to take care of their applications and data.
For completeness, managed hosting can also be a cost-effective way of running data centers. You can look for managed hosting vendors who can increase the hardware available to you at times of peak demand. There is, of course, a cost for this and notice is likely to be required, but it could be a useful option for SMBs which are still in the process of migrating to the cloud.
IT services can take care of your ongoing staffing needs
Recruiting and retaining skilled staff is often one of the biggest headaches in business and it’s often at its worst when it comes to recruiting and retaining skilled IT staff (especially skilled IT security staff) as there is a major global shortage of them. It can be particularly difficult for SMBs as they may struggle to offer the same opportunities for ongoing training and development as larger organizations and specialist IT services companies, such as managed IT services vendors, IT support vendors and even IT helpdesk vendors.
Many SMBs are choosing to deal with this by handing over the everyday running of their infrastructure to managed IT services vendors with assistance from IT support vendors (who deal with ad hoc issues such as projects and break/fix work) and IT helpdesk vendors. They may then be able to eliminate the need for an in-house IT team or choose to build an in-house IT team purely for “value-add” tasks, such as development.
If you’d like to speak to a reputable and experienced IT services provider in Folsom, please click here now to contact Aperio.IT.
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