How Can “The Cloud” Help Your Business?

There has been plenty of recent buzz about "the cloud". The hype seems to have peaked recently with companies targeting consumers with TV and print ads. For a price you can now store and access all of your personal and work content remotely. Services allow you to easily access applications, critical documents and multimedia like music, photos and video remotely. In addition, you can sync up your information between mobile devices and home based-based networks through intermediary technologies known as the cloud. 

So how can your company benefit from it? First, it is helpful to understand what the cloud actually is. We define cloud-based computing as technologies that deliver computing over a network as an on-demand service. The model allows for sharing of applications, resources and data with computers and mobile devices almost like a utility.  

There are both public clouds and private clouds. Public clouds are accessible in a broad public domain to individual users or multiple organizations. Private clouds are resources shared by one organization.  Clouds have a few distinguishing characteristics; resource pooling, self-service, rapid scalability, measured service and in the case of a public cloud broad network access.

For small and medium businesses the reality is that cloud-based computing is a great opportunity to optimize your IT infrastructure and spending to allow for a renewed focus on revenue-generating opportunities. If implemented correctly private clouds can be used to deliver IT resources to your end users quickly, reliably and at a lower cost. From both a business and technology management perspective these technologies can provide the following benefits: 

• Backup & Disaster Recovery
• Business Continuity
• Cost Savings
• Improved Scalability
• Increased Security
• Rapid Deployment
• Simplified IT Infrastructure

Cloud computing and managed services are no longer just a business advantage for large corporations. Give us a call or visit our cloud & advanced services page to learn about how your organization can benefit from the power of the cloud.

Focus: Managed Services for the Education Industry

It is safe to say the IT landscape is in a constant state of change. New technologies emerge and existing platforms are updated to address the ever changing needs of users. For many organizations an efficient and cost-effective way of coping with the evolving nature of technology is through the use of managed services. 

Within this model a managed service partner provides maintenance, monitoring and ongoing management of an organization’s technology and infrastructure so they can focus on their core business. Large businesses have been quick to adopt managed service solutions however recently, progressive education providers are realizing benefits from these solutions as well. 

An education provider’s technology and support should align with its organizational and educational goals. In order to achieve this synergy, a growing number of institutions  seek external assistance with planning, implementing and managing their technology plan.  As a result they are able to maximize the role technology plays in the success of their students, teachers and employees. 

Here are a few of the specific benefits that managed services offer to the education industry:

• Network monitoring provides 24x7 infrastructure coverage . 
• Enables additional application level security.
• Enhances compliance and addresses risk management.
• Provides proactive maintenance for software and hardware platforms. 
• Fixed fee pricing models make it easier to forecast and control costs.
• Disaster recovery features offer additional layers of data redundancy and risk management for the organization.
• Serves as a dependable extension of the IT team.

Managed services enable all stakeholders to maximize the benefit from each technology investment. The managed service platforms also act as an extension to the IT organization rather than a replacement. Offerings like backup and recovery provide risk avoidance to organizations with critical data to protect, while network monitoring enhances the responsiveness of the IT team, Additionally the technical expertise brought by these providers allows for additional expertise to be immediately available to assist with upgrades and the daily care and feeding of the organizations’ application infrastructure in maintaining a functional and secure environment.

Although every institution’s needs are different, this does not mean the upfront investment needs to be significant  in order to acquire the latest technology and support for academic or administrative needs. An experienced managed service provider will offer an assessment to identify requirements and recommend an appropriate solution to move from current to future state. They can also assist with implementation and rapid scalability if needed.

IPLogic offers a full suite of managed services to assist with IT support, maintenance, monitoring and network management. IPLogic’s consulting team and managed service solutions offer more effective utilization of IT budgets while helping to improve the learning environment. Contact IPLogic to learn more.