Most companies rely on the expertise of multiple providers who support their business in areas such as applications development and maintenance, IT infrastructure, ISPs or MSPs, and Cloud Hosting. However, it can be challenging to find one expert advisor to guide you towards the best solution to fit your needs who isn't influenced by what they can sell you.
Today’s options are endless with Cloud-based Services, Managed Services in addition to on-premise solutions. A thorough assessment of your current IT landscape along with your growth or needs requirements would be best served by an independent Solutions Provider that can architect the best of all offerings to accommodate your current technical requirements and scale for the future.
Your business may require a hybrid solution that includes a unique blend of on-premise and cloud services to be optimal. Therefore, you would need to identify an IT partner that is an expert in all of these services and solutions and ideally offer them all as well.
You may think an on premise infrastructure solution is the best fit, however the deployment option may be best suited for the cloud. To ease the transition, a hybrid solution to a traditional client can also work with a migration plan to the cloud over time. This is the most common cycle and something only a provider who offers both hosted and on premise can do.
Benefits of dealing with a provider offering on premise and cloud services
- Implement end to end solutions
- Enable superior support and management due to familiarity with your environment
- Optimize existing investment
- Control monthly spend and increase as required with scalable solutions
- Advisory services with knowledge about latest technologies
- Multi-faceted Experience
Specialization in both would include expertise in design, implementation, integration and management of various types of environments and best practices.
Challenges you want to avoid
- Managing multiple vendor relationships.
- Not receiving proactive advice and assessments to stay up with current solutions
- Spending money without getting optimal performance or scalability required.
- Overly leveraged IT Departments without adequate support
- IT Management issues, lack of control, lack of resources for management / support
Ask the right questions
To find the right provider offering services and solutions aligned with your needs for both on premise and hosted services:
- Check solution architects and technical support personnel qualifications, certifications
- Confirm their ability to implement and support
- Verify Partner levels; how much experience and success have they had with the technologies they sell and support
- Visit facilities: verify ownership, management and maintenance
- Inquire about their Cloud: did they build it, or are they reselling?
- Get their hosting facility specs and locations
- Verify Facilities Country location: Canadian based provider for guarantee your data resides locally
- Inquire about their hosted offering’s infrastructure that supports it
- Management options: verify the level of control over management of the solution that aligns with your needs
What to look for from an IT Solutions and Services Provider
Your business’ IT requirements today will not be the same in a year, three years or five years from now. Look for an IT provider that can respond to your changing needs. After all, flexibility is to get what you need, when you need it with the level of expertise to deliver. Your provider needs to have the appropriate level of control to be able to offer this type of flexibility, so ensure that you are also speaking with an organization who is facilities based, meaning that they own, manage and maintain all the aspects of the environment your services are delivered and supported on, rather than reselling and being at the mercy of that carrier who you have not had the opportunity to screen.
For further information, please visit our Managed Services Resource Page or contact us to get a conversation started.
Chris Charette
Co-Founder, Sentia