Over the past few years, there has been a significant surge in the demand for Cloud Computing solutions and services. A global pandemic, and the events that followed compelled organizations to quickly adopt remote work models. This change has enhanced flexibility, and decreased operating overheads, leading to a pursuit of cloud capabilities across various sectors.
As per Accenture, 63% of high-growth businesses have already adopted a “productive anywhere” or Hybrid workforce model. However, deploying resources to cloud platforms alone is not enough to meet the ever-increasing need to thrive in today’s digital business environment.
According to a report, more than 87% of modern enterprises are already using or plan to use Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to manage their infrastructure. The global cloud-managed services market was valued at USD $267 billion in 2022.
In addition to the benefits of cloud integration, cloud-managed networks have become the next best investment for modern enterprises. The cloud-managed network is a new model for network deployment, where the enterprise can host the entire network lifecycle in the cloud, for effective management.
Defining a Cloud-Managed Network
The cloud-managed network is composed of a cloud-management platform and network equipment. The cloud-managed network solution allows network devices such as access points, switches, gateways, and firewalls to be managed on the cloud platform.
It is an innovative network management model that relies on cloud management platforms, and uses emerging technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud computing to implement cloud-based management and monitoring of network equipment.
Why Deploy a Cloud-Managed Network?
The modern cloud infrastructure provides greater agility, which is difficult to achieve with traditional on-premise models. For many organizations, the ability to take advantage of a simplified architecture, reduce the physical footprint, and redirect IT resources towards more mission-critical priorities is highly attractive.
The popularity of cloud computing has opened doors that were not possible with siloed, on-premise infrastructures and software. It is easier to gather data from a larger number of sources, support a wider audience without adding physical resources, and create a vast “data lake” that provides more granular and meaningful analytics. Cloud-managed networking follows the same trend, and offers similar benefits to organizations.
The Benefits of Cloud-Managed Networks
Enterprises are increasingly facing challenges in business efficiency and adapting quickly to market changes. To address these challenges, many companies are turning to cloud-managed networking solutions. These solutions offer a range of benefits, such as simplified deployment, improved efficiency, flexible architecture, automatic issue identification, and cost savings.
Cloud-managed networking can deliver cloud services that are more secure, easy to manage, energy-efficient, and scalable. It can also identify network problems quickly and efficiently, and enable cost monitoring, workload tuning, and resource automation. By using cloud-managed networking solutions, enterprises can simplify network deployment, improve efficiency, and save costs.
Remote Work Enablement and Cloud-Managed Services
Cloud computing is a crucial technology for remote work, providing several advantages such as enhanced flexibility, scalability, cost optimization, improved security, centralized data management, and environmental sustainability.
A cloud-based approach enables remote employees to access their files, applications, and data from anywhere, collaborate with remote teams, and rapidly scale their infrastructure up or down, as per evolving needs.
Cloud providers prioritize data security and employ robust cybersecurity measures to protect sensitive information and ensure business continuity (BC). Cloud-based tools streamline workflows, automate routine tasks, and eliminate the burden of software updates, constant patching and maintenance.
Cloud computing allows remote workers to leverage advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data analytics. Finally, cloud computing contributes to environmental sustainability by reducing the carbon footprint associated with on-premise IT infrastructures.
Why Cloud Network Security?
As companies adopt cloud-based infrastructures, traditional perimeter-based defenses become ineffective. Cloud network security solutions help close this gap, allowing companies to achieve the same level of security monitoring and threat prevention they would expect in the case of on-premise environments.
Why Choose Managed Service Providers (MSPs)
Network transformation has become a central and critical component of day-to-day IT operations. As a result, IT leaders are constantly seeking ways to optimize costs, while maintaining the availability, performance, resilience, and security of their networks.
However, most enterprises lack the in-house capabilities to manage today’s highly complex networks. This is where the role of specialized Managed Network Services (MNS) providers comes in, with future-ready infrastructure.
ATSG, a leading global provider of Managed IT Services and innovative Technology Solutions, has been recognized as a Leader in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Managed Network Services (MNS); for the second consecutive year.
Let us take a brief look at the MNS capabilities of our highly intelligent solution called the ATSG OPTX™ Platform.
Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps)
The ATSG OPTX Platform utilizes Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) to provide exceptional network performance, availability, and problem remediation. Our AI-powered algorithms constantly monitor key network performance metrics in real-time, and compare them against pre-defined performance parameters. If there is any degradation in network performance, our platform will immediately alert your IT team or our certified professionals, so they can take immediate action to remediate the issue, and restore network performance.
Business Impact Monitoring (BIM)
Mission-critical workloads and processes are crucial for any business, and they cannot afford to fail or suffer from performance issues. That’s where our ATSG OPTX Platform’s business impact monitoring (BIM) capabilities come in. The BIM capability of our intelligent platform enables your IT team to perform preventive network maintenance, troubleshooting, and capacity planning for the future, particularly during periods of high network strain. This helps your IT infrastructure deliver exceptional performance, even during peak usage.
Root Cause Analysis (RCA)
Many network performance issues are often approached with a “fire-fighting” mentality. However, the ATSG OPTX Platform takes a different approach by prioritizing Root Cause Analysis (RCA). This means that we focus on finding the exact underlying cause of any network performance issue, and taking appropriate corrective action. By doing so, we can either eliminate, or minimize the chances of the issue recurring.
Intelligent Automation
Our commitment to deliver intelligent automation to our clients is at the core of the design of our ATSG OPTX Platform. We prioritize intelligent network management capabilities, which not only provide exceptional visibility, monitoring, and performance, but also enable us to identify problems and take prompt remedial action.
Contact ATSG for class leading Managed Network Services (MNS), Cloud Computing, Technology and Cybersecurity solutions for your enterprise.
