Managed Service Providers Should Provide Cloud Services
Customer expectations are at an all-time high, along with demand for cloud services. A comprehensive cloud solution has never been more difficult to develop because customers demand a wide range of services from a single source. But specifically what must you supply to differentiate yourself from competing managed service providers (MSPs)?
This article provides a detailed analysis of the eight crucial cloud services that MSP businesses must offer to their customers. This essay will provide you a comprehensive knowledge of what it takes to develop a competitive cloud computing solution if you are a beginning provider.
Which Cloud Services Should MSP Providers Offer?
Approximately 85% of IT leaders and decision-makers concur that hiring an MSP to provide a cloud service can:
- Aid the IT division in effectively safeguarding corporate assets.
- Allow internal teams to concentrate on important corporate activities.
- Contribute to the success of a cloud migration.
- Boost the internal IT team’s spirits.
- Increase the rate of staff retention.
Undoubtedly, there is a need for the cloud, but success in the current market is challenging. The complete list of cloud services that an MSP organization must offer is provided below.
Cloud Monitoring
Each MSP should offer cloud monitoring services to enable end users to proactively assess the:
- The condition of the infrastructure in the cloud
- Various performance and availability indicators
- Each cloud environment’s level of security
Because there are several moving elements in every cloud-based system, users require various kinds of monitoring to keep things working properly. You must offer tools for observing, ranging from agent-based tracking to remote monitoring for regional zones:
Website Performance
Performance metrics for websites show how activity affects performance and loading times, such as traffic and resource utilization.
Cloud storage
This monitoring function tracks cloud storage activity and makes volume configurations visible.
Databases
The capacity to monitor user behavior, data integrity, database requests, and queries. This kind of monitoring is essential because databases account for more than half of performance bottlenecks.
Virtual machines
User activity, performance conditions, and capacity are monitored during virtualization.
Virtual networks
Live monitoring of load balancers, switches, routers, and firewalls
App performance management (APM)
APM allows users to track cloud-based apps down to the code level in a single window.
End-user experience monitoring (EUM)
EUM aids a client in tracking statistics including page-load times, network request rates, and crash rates.
Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DraaS)
A user of disaster recovery as a service is able to establish a backup site in the event of business interruptions like:
- A tragedy of nature (hurricane, flood, wildfire, earthquake, etc.)
- Power failure
- Equipment malfunction
- Cyber attacks
For customers that lack the resources or knowledge required to manage a successful disaster recovery (DR) site, DRaaS is an essential service. Even if the primary facility is completely shut down, the user initiates the disaster recovery plan in the event of an incident and resumes operations.
DRaaS can be provided via a contract or a pay-as-you-go arrangement (with payment based on storage, bandwidth, RAM, or compute consumption). Typically, MSPs offer three DRaaS models:
Managed DRaaS
You are entirely in charge of data backups and disaster recovery on the cloud.
Assisted DRaaS
You and the client share responsibility for backups and disaster recovery. For instance, while you guarantee the availability of IT infrastructure, the customer can handle the failover of custom apps.
Self-service DRaaS
For the complete DR strategy’s planning, testing, and management, the client is solely accountable. Self-service the most affordable type of DRaaS that an MSP can provide is always DRaaS.
Safe Data Storage
Every MSP needs to give its customers a safe way to store their workloads, data, and applications on the cloud. You must uphold the CIA trinity of data security:
- Confidentiality (guard data from unwanted access, both from programs and humans) (protect data from unauthorized access, both from apps and people).
- Integrity (prevent unauthorized changes).
- Make sure the central key repository is completely secure.
On-demand supplementary services like key pair generation, escrow access, and key recovery should be made available.
Regardless of the cloud deployment model (public, private, hybrid, community, or multi-cloud) or as-a-service model, these principles must be followed (FaaS, IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS). With the following steps, you should be able to ensure cloud computing security:
- Micro-segmentation
- Screening for advanced vulnerabilities
- Detection and Response Managed (MDR).
- Endpoint security
- Backup and recovery from disaster (BDR)
- Provide confidential computing (the practice of encrypting in-use data) (the practice of encrypting in-use data).
- Zero-trust rules and strict access controls.
The majority of businesses cannot afford these procedures on their own, which is your clear selling point. A cloud customer can dependably avoid regulatory non-compliance (CCPA, GDPR, PCI, HIPAA, etc.), data breaches, and data leaks thanks to the top-notch security you offer.
Hybrid Cloud
SMBs and businesses continue to favour hybrid clouds because of their special advantages. A corporation can combine cloud resources with on-premises systems using the hybrid cloud architecture to produce a single, cost-effective IT environment.
The main advantages of a hybrid cloud are as follows:
- Selecting the ideal (and most economical) setting for every workload
- Integrating the best cloud services available from several vendors and data centers
- Workload orchestration and automation between on-premises and cloud systems
As an MSP, it is your responsibility to make sure the customer avoids typical hybrid cloud problems like:
- There are security hazards when transferring data between different platforms.
- Possibility of breaking legal requirements (especially data privacy laws)
- Numerous systems integration compatibility issues
- Across all environments, a lack of visibility
- Issues with mobility and data portability
Edge Computing
More and more clients will be interested in edge computing as IoT and 5G developments continue. Edge computing is the practice of transferring data processing from the cloud to regional hubs, such as edge servers, IoT devices, or user computers.
There are several advantages to putting compute, storage, and analytics capabilities in an edge device that is close to the data source, including:
- Faster reaction times are achieved by reducing the quantity of long-distance communication between a client and server, which reduces latency.
- Increased network security as a result of regional data processing
- Lower expenses since an edge server keeps the majority of the raw data and uses less bandwidth.
- Less demand on the main server
One key cloud service that MSP providers must provide is edge computing. Edge computing can be used by your clients in a variety of contexts.
- Smart security surveillance
- Autonomous vehicles
- Services for streaming with improved caching.
- Medical surveillance equipment
- Live video conferencing that is interactive.
Three fundamental drawbacks with the centralized data center concept are addressed by edge computing: high bandwidth costs, latency problems, and data congestion. As forecasted in our article on cloud computing predictions for 2022, the need for edge computing is only going to grow over the next few years, therefore make sure your MSP offering allows users to deploy at the edge.
Cloud Routers
Another crucial cloud service that MSP firms must offer to their customers is cloud routers. Overcoming the difficulties of a multi-cloud strategy is still a problem because data transfer between many providers is still slow, dangerous, and difficult.
A controlled virtual routing solution called a cloud router enables a client to create fast connections between two or more networks or service providers. A cloud router is the best choice for tying together cloud workloads spread across many CSPs because it guarantees the connection is:
- Fast (since you can deploy a virtual router close to the actual cloud onramp).
- Safe (cloud-to-cloud direct connectivity enables advanced cyber-security measures and practices).
- Flexible (cloud networking leads to highly scalable deployments and provisioning)
Cloud Automation
High levels of automation are necessary to get the cost and agility benefits of the cloud. You must assist clients as an MSP by automating monotonous operations like:
- Virtual machine sizing, provisioning, and configuration (VMs)
- Clustering virtual machines
- Managing load balancing and performance
- Tracking indicators for availability
- Creating storage logical unit numbers (LUNs) (LUNs).
- Making use of a virtual network
These operations are time-consuming and prone to error when done manually, which results in extensive debugging and possible security threats. With cloud automation, the user gets rid of the repetition, waste, and errors that come with manual processes.
The following are typical instances of automated cloud tasks:
Resource Allocation
Autoscaling changes the way compute, memory, or networking resources are used to meet the demand at hand. Any pay-as-you-go cloud pricing model you desire to provide must have this feature.
Setups
Instead of using manual settings, a user can define infrastructure configurations using a template and IaC.
Development and deployment
The CI/CD pipeline, which includes everything from code scanning and version control through testing and deployment, depends on automation. This is true for both continuous software development and DevOps.
Tagging
Automatically classifying an item according to predetermined standards, circumstances, and operational requirements
Security
Automated security measures guard against threats, scan for anomalies, and limit access to apps and data in the cloud.
Logging
All action involving a cloud service may be automatically logged by cloud tools and functions.
Encryption Management
A growing number of businesses are using encryption to safeguard their most important asset—data—as cybercrime is on the increase. You must offer cloud-based key management and data encryption services to your clients as an MSP.
A single business may employ hundreds or even thousands of unique encryption keys. You should make it possible for customers to manage their keys in the cloud, storing, backing up, and organizing them securely.
When compared to other MSPs, you should:
- Centralize the maintenance of encryption keys (even if the client has a multi or hybrid cloud).
- Use best practices for key management to provide you constant, dependable control over each key.
- Give support for audits and a reporting tool.
- Make sure the central key repository is completely secure.
- On-demand supplementary services like key pair generation, escrow access, and key recovery should be made available.
- Provide confidential computing (the practice of encrypting in-use data) (the practice of encrypting in-use data).
