Generally, the more complex something is, the more sense it makes to trust an expert. You likely feel comfortable giving yourself over-the-counter medication, but you wouldn’t preform open-heart surgery on yourself. You probably have no issue putting gas in your car, but you would rather a mechanic replace your transmission than yourself. Managed cloud services operate much the same way.

Internal IT departments generally do not possess the skills to effectively monitor and maintain a cloud environment. Managed cloud services mean you can leverage the power of the cloud without the investment and resource drain of becoming a cloud expert yourself. Rather than hiring staff to manage a non-differentiating aspect of your IT (your cloud management), you can focus on those products and services that bring in customers and revenue. This allows a trusted partner to manage your compute, storage, network, and operating systems for you, as well as the tools and applications that run on top of that infrastructure.

Here are five reasons why you should outsource your cloud management to an expert:

1. Cost savings: Put simply, outsourcing cloud managed services is cheaper than staffing an IT department with cloud experts. Additionally, the flexibility allows you to set a budget for these services and have a consistent monthly bill that suits the needs of your organization.
2. Technological evolution: The nature of technology is that it is always improving. With in-house staff, your IT personnel would have to spend company time training when a new technology or required upgrade gets released. External managed cloud providers, however, will not waste your resources staying up to date on the latest technology.
3. Service support: Managed cloud providers are able to leverage economy of scale to offer faster issue response times, disaster recovery with minimal downtime, more extensive coverage, and many more benefits than what an on-site staff could offer. And when vendor-specific issues arise, managed cloud providers interface with them on your behalf, saving you time, money, and resources.
4. Centralized network infrastructure: With a managed cloud network, all applications and servers are managed in a central datacenter. This means storage and backup can be built into a centralized network and increases network availability. A managed cloud provider can manage your network infrastructure 24/7, can monitor your network for required updates, and more.
5. Customization: Managed cloud services can include private, public, and hybrid cloud environments. Your application and data will lead the provider to create a detailed plan for the cloud solution and managed services best suited to your specific organization. And as your organization grows and changes, so too can your managed cloud approach.

Once you’ve determined that you need a managed cloud provider, the question becomes who to turn to. Cisco Meraki offers comprehensive, scalable, and intuitive cloud-managed IT solutions with integrated hardware, software, and cloud services, all managed via a centralized, web-based dashboard. Meraki products come with out-of-the-box centralized management, layer 7 device and application visibility, real-time web-based diagnostics, monitoring, reporting, and more. Meraki is the industry’s only end-to-end solution that unifies WAN, LAN, wireless LAN, and mobile device management under a single platform. And as a Cisco Gold Partner with FIVE Cisco Master specializations, including Data Center/Hybrid Cloud and Networking, GDT is the perfect partner to assemble and deploy this technology quickly and cost-effectively. Want to learn more? Simply enter your information below, and we’ll contact you with more information.