Setting up your own business’s data infrastructure is no simple task. It requires a deep and thorough knowledge of hardware, storage servers, and data centers, as well as hefty investments. If your business is a startup or small business with limited technology expertise, time and financial capability, managed infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) could be the best option to serve your information-driven needs. Managed IaaS is a cloud service over the internet through a third-party service provider that offers the necessary hardware, cloud hosting and scheduled tasking application programming interface (APIs) to allow a company to manage all tasks with relative ease. These tasks often range from scheduled backup to employee time tracking. Managed IaaS also takes care of the physical resources required for your business as well as maintains and manages the data security for your sensitive information.
The Pros and Cons of Infrastructure as a Service
Being an internet and cloud-based service, Managed IaaS comes with all the advantages of real-time updates of cloud computing. Here are its other benefits:
Lower Costs. This is the most obvious benefit. Using the cloud computing services of Managed IaaS means you don’t need to own a data server or employ an infrastructure team to securely store your data. This significantly cuts your business expenses.
Scalability. As your business grows, so do your computational and data needs. This includes the data generated by marketing and sales, human number resources, and finance, among others. Setting up your own IT Infrastructure to manage all the information requires constant upgrades as your business expands. With cloud-based Managed IaaS, the third-party service provider owns the hardware and will be responsible for scaling and managing your data storage needs.
Data Access Flexibility. Your employees still have access to their data while management will also be able to monitor and control the accesses, ensuring that the wrong information does not fall in the hands of the wrong employees.
Offline Data Management. Even if the internet fails or the server is down, the local set up and the ability to work offline would allow the company to continue running its business through the interference. However, there would always be a specified length of time the system can continue without the server and internet connection. Luckily, in the modern world, you will be hard pressed to find a hosting service that is down for days in the end.
Unfortunately, Managed IaaS comes with some setbacks. While these issues should not demotivate you from investing in Managed IaaS due to its countless advantages, these should still be noted when considering employing such a service:
Security. While the internet in itself is not secure and literally everything can be hacked with great effort, service providers and software companies continuously develop their systems to block entities with malicious intent. With a good service provider, Managed IaaS will give you added security.
Technical Problems Many issues can arise with technology. Managed IaaS also requires management, upgrades, and maintenance. During a disaster, you might even have to halt some of your business processes temporarily. But service providers always have a multi-layered business continuity and disaster recovery strategy to ensure you will be up in no time.
Dependency. Availing Managed IaaS means relying on your service provider to be part of your day-to-day work. While this might not be a bad thing, you will have to give a certain level of reliance to a third party.
Maintenance and Privacy. While maintaining and upgrading systems can be assigned to your service provider, every upgrade comes at a cost. Above all, some of your company’s sensitive information might be accessible to the service provider, which in itself is a risk.
IaaS and NST
If you are looking for a reliable Managed IaaS service provider, NST provides high security with complete management over your system. NST has the technical expertise and experience in Managed IaaS that you can rely on. Contact us today to understand how our service can benefit your business.