Moving to a Unified Cloud Environment: Have You Bundled, Yet?

By the DynaSis Team

Although small and midsized businesses (SMBs) were a bit late to the cloud party compared to larger enterprises, several research reports indicate that SMB decision makers are now embracing the cloud enthusiastically. As we might expect from overworked, budget-limited business owners, they are expressing a preference for “bundled” cloud services, whereby an SMB can have its email, applications, data storage (servers) and security united under a single service with a single provider.

Such a solution makes complete sense from the SMB business perspective. Not only is it easier and faster to deploy the cloud with a unified solution, but company personnel enjoy access to business-critical applications and data without the bur­den of IT infrastructure support. Furthermore, the bottom line gets a boost from a fixed, pay-as-you-go model, including converting IT costs to an operating expense and eliminating infrastructure and software upgrade expenses.

So popular has this approach become among SMBs that a survey of 1,300 SMBs, conducted by Coleman Parkes Research, found that nearly 70 percent of SMB decision makers prefer to receive their cloud services as a bundle. SMBs expressed even greater support for having all communication-related services united. Among those surveyed, 80 percent supported the idea of receiving a single monthly bill from one provider for both cloud environment and telecommunications services.

So, what does a “bundled” cloud solution look like? Optimally, it would be a fully managed, cloud-based IT platform with the following features and functions:

• Corporate data, email and applications hosted at world-class, ultra-secure, compliant data centers, ensuring best-practices security for all corporate assets.
• Company personnel would be able to access corporate assets, 24/7/365, from a secure online portal that ensures security in transit from the cloud to the user. With no data stored on user desktops and devices, endpoint security will also be assured.
• The provider would guarantee system uptime of 99.999%.
• The provider would include 24/7/365 IT support for all users, in addition to monitoring and maintaining the cloud-based corporate assets.
• Space allocations would be dynamically managed to ensure users always had enough storage.
• All corporate data and applications would be mirrored to a separate, secure server for disaster recovery purposes.
• Migrations and subsequent updates and upgrades would be actively managed by the provider to eliminate unplanned downtime and inconvenience for company personnel.

Providers such as DynaSis offer solutions that meet all of these critieria, giving SMBs the freedom to walk away from IT burdens and headaches, forever. As SMBs realize the potential of these offerings, we expect a large percentage will move from supporting the concept of a unified cloud solution to actively using one. In essence, all-in-one cloud hosting is the best way to realize the core value proposition of the cloud, which is to deliver high-value applications and data securely, anytime, anywhere and on any device.

About DynaSis

DynaSis is an Atlanta IT services and cloud computing provider for small and midsized businesses. All of our solutions focus on helping companies achieve the three fundamental IT necessities of the modern business—availability, security and mobility. We specialize in on-demand and on-premise managed IT services, managed cloud infrastructure, desktops and backups, and professional hardware and equipment installation. For more information about DynaSis’ IT support and services, visit www.dynasis.com.