Keeping up with the demands of an evolving business environment has never been more challenging. With a need to be as nimble and responsive as possible, enterprises are increasingly turning to managed cloud hosting to enhance their technological capabilities and enable their internal teams to focus on the strategic issues that will drive their business forward. In fact, research shows that by 2022, up to 60% of organizations will use an external service provider’s managed cloud service offering, which Gartner analysts say is double the percentage from 2018.
If you want to position your business for success in the marketplace of the future, managed cloud hosting gives you a platform to move forward with confidence.
Agility becomes a competitive advantage
The business landscape is moving at a more rapid pace than ever, and keeping up – or better yet, getting ahead – requires that your company be able to pivot quickly. Whether it’s identifying favorable market conditions, engaging new customer segments, leveraging the resources and expertise of your business partners, or simply streamlining your operations to shed technical debt and outdated workflows, you want the agility to jump on new opportunities and minimize waste. Managed cloud hosting enables you to deploy new technologies and expand services on demand so you can achieve the best results no matter what the future holds.
Scalability enables better responsiveness
With fixed assets powering your technology infrastructure, it’s difficult to quickly add capacity. It’s equally challenging to reduce capacity when your activity levels go down, because those servers and other assets are already in place. Managed cloud hosting empowers you to burst up precisely when you need it, and then scale back down if your needs decrease. The future of business is likely to require short response times to address changes in customer needs, shifts in sales cycles, and events such as new product launches. You don’t want to lag behind when an opportunity comes along, and managed cloud hosting gives you the scalability you need to maintain the growth path that puts you ahead of your competition.
Drive productivity with mobility
The workforce of the future won’t be tied down to a single office location. In fact, many of them may not have an assigned desk within a company building at all. Your business needs to not only support the mobility tomorrow’s workforce expects, you should be driving mobility initiatives to help increase your employees’ communication capabilities and productivity. Managed cloud hosting provides the foundation to ensure your teams have access to applications, datasets, collaboration tools, and other resources whenever and wherever they need it.
Enable your IT team to be more strategic
Are administrative and maintenance activities consuming your IT team’s time? Are your internal experts occupied with issues such as security, new feature rollouts, compliance, or network and system monitoring? The right managed cloud hosting solution can shift those day-to-day tasks off your shoulders, giving you the ability to focus on issues that are much more valuable and better aligned with your organization’s mission. Your internal personnel can instead work on strategic projects, high-level needs assessments, workflow and process improvements, driving user adoption and productivity, and delivering more efficiency and higher returns out of your technology investments.
Improve your business resilience
As many organizations discovered during the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis, network bottlenecks, lack of service availability, and centrally located data and applications can seriously diminish a company’s ability to deal with adversity and bounce back from disruption. Business resilience will become even more critical to long-term success as enterprises navigate a future where the workforce is more mobile, the marketplace is more dynamic, the economic climate is less forgiving, and everyone has a greater reliance on technology to help smooth out the bumps. Managed cloud hosting empowers your business to rapidly respond to turmoil – whether it’s a local power outage or a nationwide service interruption – ensuring consistent availability and performance in an inconsistent world.
Control and maximize your IT spend
Unlike self-managed, on-prem architectures, managed cloud hosting gives your company the ability to better control costs and pay only for the services and resources you need. A small boost in data storage capabilities doesn’t require a full upgrade, for example. Various pricing models are available to fit your needs – from the services you want to buy to the level of consumption you expect to see from month to month – providing the opportunity to tailor your monthly bill around everything you need without paying for anything you don’t. You’re in full control of your IT spend, and you can direct the cost savings toward strategic initiatives and other investments designed to move your company forward.
Shauna Hassett is vice president of marketing, Carousel Industries. Read more Carousel Industries blogs here.
