Managed Infrastructure Providers
Businesses who want a worry free technology infrastructure have been turning to Managed Infrastructure Providers to provide some or all of the technology equipment needs from Managed Server, Managed Virtual Server or simply a layer of Managed Infrastructure. Access to managed infrastructure decreases your need to have IT staff to focus on business critical core components. While these managed infrastructure firms focus on providing a highly available internet connection, managed firewall solution, virtual server infrastructure or dedicated server equipment, your internal IT staff can focus on other items as the most critical uptime has been taken care of. In managed infrastructure scenarios, your business is responsible for managing the operating system on down to the end user.
- Virtual Server: A perfect solution for small-to-medium sized businesses, server virtualization relieves the responsibilities of extensive maintenance of servers. Utilizing virtual servers makes more efficient use of server resources and assists in disaster recovery.
- Managed Firewall: Though a firewall on its own is necessary, having a managed firewall ensures that it will be properly configured and always up and running. This solution is ideal as it provides 24/7/365 expert protection to companies of all sizes.
- Managed Infrastructure: When your infrastructure is managed, a completely customized solution is created so that your business can meet business goals and easily build and change its infrastructure as it grows and needs change.
- IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): IaaS is a type of cloud computing that essentially provides virtualized computing services via the Internet.
- Managed Hosting: By utilizing managed hosting services, businesses have administrative access but the service provider provides the hardware, software, and operating systems. Additionally a managed hosting service provider sets up and configures hardware, and provides technical support, system maintenance and patch management.
- Managed Servers and Private Clouds: From managed servers to managed private clouds, having a fully managed infrastructure allows for your business to operate efficiently.
- Hosted Private Clouds: A hosted private cloud eliminates the need to share physical hardware which lowers risk and increases reliability.
- Bare Metal Servers: A bare metal environment is either a network or computer system that has a virtual machine installed on hardware instead of within the host OS (operating system). Bare metal is about the raw hardware, as it is a physical server that is solely dedicated to one customer.
- File Based and Image Based Backups: File based backups are best for businesses looking for a more selective backup process, as businesses choose which files or folders they want backed up. Image based backups are hard drive images that consist of block by block contents of a hard drive. With an image-based backup, all of a business' data is backed up, allowing for complete and quick recovery of data.
- Managed Security: Having managed security means having 24/7 monitoring with a cohesive security plan including a managed firewall, intrusion detection and prevention, malware defense, log monitoring and management, compliance, penetration testing, incident and more.
- Proactive Monitoring: By having your infrastructure managed, your network is proactively monitored so that potential threats or outages are immediately addressed and taken care of.
- Dedicated Private Cloud: A dedicated private cloud is dedicated to your business but is hosted off-site. Resources are exclusively dedicated to your business, but are housed in a data center.
- Public Cloud: In a public cloud environment, there are multiple tenants. A business buys a "servicer slice" within an environment that is shared with multiple clients. A public cloud is best for businesses not in need of the more advanced security and complex infrastructure offered with a public cloud.
- Enterprise Cloud: If your business is an enterprise, an enterprise cloud provides many benefits including efficient utilization of resources and extended security so that your business can run smoothly and efficiently.
- Veeam Cloud Connect: To avoid losing data, you should have a backup off site. Cloud Connect provides a secure, quick and efficient way to backup and restore from the cloud.
- Managed SAN and Managed Network Storage: The need for storage of business data continues to escalate as businesses grow and try managing far too much data on their own.
- Managed Load Balancer: By having your traffic load managed, workload is appropriately balanced. This leads to increased speed and reliability.
- DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service): By utilizing DRaaS your business is secured by having physical or virtual servers replicated and hosted by a third-party service provider to provide failover and disaster recovery in the case of a disaster.
- Managed Desktop or Virtual Desktop: Clients can simply have workstations and thin clients attach to a managed desktop or virtual desktop provider. Users will instantly connect to the managed center to access their approved desktop. This is an efficient way to keep control of the end-users desktop while having the managed provider oversee the experience. A business incurs fewer viruses locally and less distraction for end-users since the desktop experience is more locked down and secured (ie no USB drives). The biggest gotcha with a managed desktop solution is that all experience is based on the reliability and the internet connection you have going to the data center and if you lose this then all your employees cannot function. In addition, this allows end users to gain access to their desktop anywhere with or without the use of VPNs.
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Managed Application Providers and Hosted Applications: Line of business (LOB) application providers allow clients to pay a monthly fee to gain access to their cloud application offering and/or a private instance of the application for companies that need more application flexibility. Examples include:
- Azure: With Microsoft Azure, businesses experience the use of an open and flexible platform that completely integrates and is flexible and scalable with protection of data.
- Quickbooks: Companies are leveraging Quickbooks cloud applications and/or private instance for a simple way to manage billing, invoicing, etc.
- Storage: Managed storage allows end users to MAP drives to the storage solution of choice.
- Monitoring as a Service and Fully Managed IT: The options when choosing a proper IT infrastructure can be overwhelming. Companies are utilizing a number of on-premise and cloud solutions that allow them to customize their hybrid environments. Each environment requires its own special management and monitoring and IT expertise, as no company is exactly the same. IT solutions are not one-size-fits-all. We offer a single experience making it easy for your business to operate whether on premise, cloud, private or a hybrid solution. We can also provide monitoring and management tools (ex. ticketing, monitoring, remediation, etc.) to businesses that do not want to manage these items in-house for LAN and WAN monitoring and management.
If you are seeking a managed infrastructure provider, or simply want to learn more about cleaning up your infrastructure, contact us at sales@convergedsystems.com or (877) 598-3999.
