Cloud Managed Services and Security

Cloud managed services are services that help to manage a client’s cloud resources or infrastructure. Cloud services include all the applications and infrastructure deployed across a cloud platform, like Microsoft Azure. Cloud managed services are typically applications or services hosted on the cloud and are managed by a third-party organization. This third-party organization is responsible for partial or complete management of the service of the client company.

Typically, a complete cloud management service includes updates, upgrades, migration, configuration, optimization, security, and maintenance. A partially managed cloud service, on the other hand, might only include the handling of critical applications and service issues. A key factor, in either case, is that both partial and complete cloud managed services are outsourced, allowing your organization to operate with less burden.

A cloud managed services provider is a vendor that offers managed cloud services for your cloud tenants and applications, such as Microsoft 365. With Arctic IT as your cloud managed services partner, we augment your team with Microsoft 365 cloud experts at a fraction of the cost of hiring an internal team.

Our cloud managed services focus on providing you with stronger security and compliance, predictable IT costs, faster support services, and many other essential services. Our goal is to take the burden of managing these resources off you, allowing you to focus on core business objectives. We can even serve as a permanent replacement for your in-house cloud IT or just support the activities of your in-house teams.

Every organization needs to pay extra attention to effective management to ease the complexities and burden that come with executing tasks on migration, optimization, updates, upgrades, and other services, some teams have opted to create a special team dedicated to managing cloud services.

However, some businesses realize greater value in outsourcing the management to third-party cloud managed services companies, such as Arctic IT. As your cloud managed services provider, we can support your team with a robust set of security tools and experienced personnel. In addition, if your local area does not readily have technically trained candidates, you may find that outsourcing this key department can bring better continuity and peace of mind.

In case you’re currently wondering which cloud managed services provider to partner with, we’ve got some tips to help you make the perfect decision for your business. Cloud managed services providers usually offer subscriptions for several services. The services might even vary from one provider to another.

When choosing your cloud managed services partner, here are some important considerations you want to keep in mind.

Skills and experience

When choosing a cloud managed services provider, one of the most important criteria to use is the provider’s experience. Do they have the required skills and experience to manage and optimize your workflows for cloud resources? What cloud services are they familiar with? What kind of organizations have they worked with before? And are they familiar with your industry’s tools and workflows?

Accurate answers to these questions will help you make the best choice.

Security and compliance

Even if you have been able to provide yourself with some level of security, the right cloud managed services provider will help you improve on any existing security architecture in your firm.

What security expertise and experience do they have? What certification level does the provider have? What regulatory, compliance, and security measures are they taking to ensure your cloud services are not compromised? Do they include any security training? Security and compliance should be one of your most important considerations when searching for a cloud managed services provider.

Transparency and trust

You must be able to trust the company you’re relying on to manage your cloud resources. This is because the partner will have full access to your data and cloud services. In order words, they must not allow any security breaches of your system through their access.

As a result, you want to choose a cloud managed services partner that will be transparent about how your services will be handled. Be sure to ask this question in the beginning because to be knowledgeable about everything they do. Ask how you will be alerted to changes, maintenance, or issues relating to your cloud services. Will they share performance reports, metrics, etc.? And will they be using proprietary or open-source tools to manage your cloud services?

Pricing for cloud managed services will vary between providers. Components that affect price typically include

• The number of employees
• The level of sophistication of your IT systems
• Whether you need to keep onsite servers
• Whether you are looking to outsource all your IT functions or only some of them

 At Arctic IT, we offer a price for each user and device. There is a separate cost for a modernization project to bring your infrastructure to serviceable standards. Our per user and device cost breakdown is $65 per user, $65 per device, and $100 per server.

As a Microsoft Cloud Service Provider (CSP), Arctic IT can help you obtain the appropriate licensing that we leverage to enable the Microsoft 365 cloud security functionality. We use Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Microsoft Defender licensing as a minimum requirement, which costs around $22/user/month for the license. Your organization may need enterprise level licensing, of which Enterprise Level 3 (E3) is our minimum at $36/user/month for the license. As your CSP, we keep a close eye on costs and only invest in licensing you need to provide the functionality your users require.

Arctic IT also adds on cloud-to-cloud backup licensing, which is a small investment for a huge peace of mind. Cloud-to-cloud backups, in the Microsoft environment, keep copies of all your files in OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. It will also back up all your email data from Exchange. This will allow you to recover a file that someone deleted from the cloud, whether it was a mistake or not.

When analyzing the final expense, make sure you understand what all is included in a cloud  managed services provider’s offering so that you ensure you are comparing different providers on an even playing field. For small to medium sized businesses, outsourcing this work is a great fit.