Part Two – Cloud Hosting
Would you run your network out of your neighbor’s house? Maybe.
Let’s consider that you keep your network all at home. Technology is not your forte’ or hobby, you are a journalist, teacher, accountant, lawyer, surgeon, or corporate manager, you just use computers to get your work done.
So you have your computer systems sitting in your house, taking up space in addition to consuming lots of power and making noise. You never really look at it, your kids are not tech people either so they don’t manage it for you. How do you know when something goes wrong? How do you pull statistics about the health of the hardware and software? When did you install the latest Microsoft patches or implement the latest security configurations to keep hackers out? Is your router configured securely? Has it been getting attacked? How do you know? What happens when something fails or the power goes out?
What if you have other family members who connect remotely to your system to work as well? Are you going to answer the phone when they call and say they are having trouble? Will you know how to fix it if you do answer that call? Do you have time to be bothered with their issues?
So maybe there are reasons that you might consider your neighbor after all? What if you are not very technical but your neighbor is, what if you have a great relationship with your neighbor. Maybe your neighbor has more power, hardware, bandwidth and, a more solid home structure. Perhaps his kids are all technical wizards and they manage your equipment and data as well as replicate it to their uncle’s house in another state, who by the way also has more power, hardware, bandwidth and, a more solid home structure. What if they give you reports and statistics on request and answer questions when you have them.
Your neighbor and his kids even answer the phone when your remote family members call with technical support concerns or questions. What if your neighbor is not just the guy who lives next door, but instead he is a Managed IT Services Provider (MSP) with a talented technical staff. And what if that MSP treats you and your employees like a friend and neighbor who cares about your success in life?
An IT MSP has resources to manage, monitor, and protect your technology and meet your changing needs at a moment’s notice. They can monitor for high traffic events such as those created when hackers are bombarding the network with attempts to break down the door. They have staff who are always on the lookout for changing security requirements and new patches or updates that need to be installed to the systems they maintain.
An IT Managed Services Provider has the resources to house your systems and data in a fortified facility that is SAS 70 certified against disasters such as tornados, floods and fire. The MSP can replicate your systems to a remote facility for redundancy just in case a disaster so extreme comes along that it actually does cause an outage at the primary location. This will ensure that your system stays online and available to you no matter what.