If you keep tabs on the technological solution or if you are a technological buff then you must be aware of some of the latest technological trends. In the current era, technological solutions have become an important part of our everyday life and even for the business. And in this blog post, we are going to talk about two such technological solution providers or we can say, technological service providers; managed IT service providers and cloud service providers.
Managed services and cloud services have become a new normal for most of the businesses as they are being used by firms of all shapes and sizes on a very large scale. Everyone who even turns causal ears towards technological solutions must be aware about these two technological solutions but most people are not aware about the differences between the two. At least not until the time comes when they need hosting services and have to go through the feature and benefit of each option. This blog post will help you understand the difference between managed IT service providers and cloud service providers.
Cloud service providers vs. Managed service providers
Cloud computing is a very broad solution where your applications, programs, and data are stored and accessed from anywhere and at anytime like Hosted QuickBooks or QuickBooks hosting. Businesses have started abandoning their traditional methods of storing and accessing data and applications on the local hard drive and they have started moving to the cloud solution because of its wide range of benefits. While on the other side, managed service provider offers support or we can say offers management of the IT infrastructure like managing hardware, keeping software updated and keeping tabs on the security. A managed service provider will monitor your IT infrastructure and solve problems whenever they arise.
Some of the most common types of cloud managed services are Amazon workspace, Rackspace, Azure, Dropbox and much more while some of the most common types of managed service providers are local and regional managed service providers of general managed IT services.
Following are the three most common types of services offered by a cloud service provider:-
Software as a Service (SaaS)– In this type of cloud computing solution, the software of the business is accessed over the internet and the payment is made on pay-as-you-go basis. If you will choose a SaaS service then you will get updates, backup and round the clock customer services without any additional cost.
Desktop as a Service(DaaS)– It is that type of cloud computing offering in which the third party (here the third party will be the cloud service provider) offers back end of virtual desktop infrastructure deployment. With DaaS, the desktop operating system runs inside virtual machines on servers in cloud.
Similarly, there is Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service are two other types of cloud computing services offered by cloud service providers.
A managed IT service provider can offer all the above-mentioned services along with the below mentioned IT services-
• Data security
• Network connectivity
• It strategy and growth management
• Virus solution
• Backup
• Disaster recovery, and much more
Most of the businesses choose cloud service providers over managed service providers because the former appears to be a cheaper option. But it doesn’t mean that you should always go with cloud service provider. Choosing the right service provider depends on your specific needs and requirement. If you need services for managing your IT infrastructure only as your in-house team is not able to do so, then you should definitely go for managed services.
You should know that just because a cloud service provider is handling your software on the cloud platform, it doesn’t mean that they will offer you the services of managed service provider mentioned above. There is no doubt that cloud service providers will help you in a lot of different ways but they will never be able to help you on a higher level of decision making and IT management.
So, there is nothing like the best service provider as choosing the right one between cloud service provider and managed service provider depends on what you want from the service provider and what are your goals.
