Our team of experts is happy and able to help you unburden your IT team during the architecture and implementation of your IT infrastructure. We have developed a detailed and transparent process that we walk through to ensure we are meeting all of your compliance and performance needs while being mindful of timelines and costs.
USE
We know your IT needs fluctuate and your business grows and adapts based on the demands of your end users. Our team sits with you to understand where you are and where you are going. We want to be an extension of your team and a trusted partner that you can count on.
Different data center and cloud options come with varying levels of assistance. There are three key areas of responsibility for achieving and maintaining compliance:
- Who are your end-users?
- Does your business experience a high season where we need to account for more resources?
- What applications are you running?
PERFORMANCE
Identifying what performance criteria are critical to the application and user experience is heavily influential in determining the best type of infrastructure. Performance requirements can vary widely by use case and can be related to compute, storage, and/or network functions.
Let’s take a closer look at your performance metrics.
- Do you have any performance issues right now with any of your applications?
- What is the most critical outcome for the applications in use?
- Are you using third-party applications?
OPERATIONS
One of the most overlooked areas to understand about your cloud needs is the capabilities and capacity of your internal technology team. It’s essential to understand what your internal team wants to be responsible for and what you can and/or want to do. Data center and cloud solutions come in a variety of flavors and can be unmanaged, co-managed, or fully managed. Understanding where you want/need to draw the line between what you are responsible for and what you want to delegate to the provider is important.
- What does your current IT team look like?
- What tasks are your team responsible to manage?
- Are there any tasks that your team just can’t seem to get to, because they are too busy in other areas?
- • What do you want, or need, a cloud provider to take off your plate?
COST
Talking about money makes everyone uncomfortable. Our team is here for the long run. We want to understand your budget parameters to plan for growth at your pace (with a few backup plans in case the business booms).
Our team can work with you to address:
- Are you looking to shift from CapEx to OpEx?
- Do you need to own your hardware assets?
- Are you comfortable with variable monthly expenses? (Public clouds often have unknown or variable costs.)
- What type of contract term are you interested in having?
TIME
The timeline for a new environment is critical. The timing of a project will impact the planning, costs, and may also dictate the migration strategy.
For example, you should evaluate your applications by how critical they are and which ones need to be moved to the new environment, and when. Creating an accurate migration schedule based on workloads and applications is vital.
COMPLIANCE
It’s important to know that compliance and security are not the same. Regulatory compliance is an organization’s adherence to laws, regulations, guidelines, and specifications relevant to its business processes. A provider’s compliance does not guarantee a customer’s compliance – it is non-transferable. What a provider can help with is ensuring that you meet the necessary requirements.
Different data center and cloud options come with varying levels of assistance. There are three key areas of responsibility for achieving and maintaining compliance:
- What the service provider is responsible for?
- What you (the business) is responsible for?
- What are the areas that overlap and that are shared between the provider and your business?
