The Case For A Managed Services Provider In Your Cloud Strategy

By Dale Curtis Jr., President, Astrix Technology Group

Cloud computing is the 21st century’s version of the industrial revolution. In the last decade, cloud computing and associated software as a service (SaaS) products have experienced massive growth and adoption. The enormous increase in computing power accessibility that cloud technologies provide are helping to fuel a revolution in innovation and worldwide economic growth. Entire industries are being transformed as the cloud spawns new apps, products and services that are changing the way we live, work and play.

In the laboratory environment, cloud adoption has been slower than in other parts of the enterprise. Several informatics systems are now available on cloud-based platforms, and moving to the cloud does offer a more streamlined path to system upgrade and maintenance. Yet, many companies are finding it difficult to migrate legacy, on-premise systems, and those that have managed to move some of their applications to the cloud are finding their IT personnel still bogged down with maintaining legacy infrastructure instead of being able to devote more time to innovative projects. For modern research laboratories, making the transition to the cloud goes well beyond a data migration project - it involves dealing with outdated vendor point solutions, integration between on-premise and cloud systems, and other associated challenges which too often result in latency and performance issues. It is becoming clear to many in the scientific community that there is a significant amount of complexity and IT work associated with moving to the cloud while integrating with the enterprise ecosystem.

Fortunately, managed services providers (MSPs) have stepped in to provide a management layer between the enterprise and the public cloud in ways that allow laboratories to gain all the benefits of cloud-based applications without having to deal with the complexities of cloud integration, data migration, and system customization and management.