In-house Cloud Management vs. Managed Services – What Is Better?
Modern cloud environments have evolved to run more efficiently and securely than on-premise data centers, and IT leaders have realized the benefits of the cloud. While the ownership of this infrastructure has been outsourced to multinational cloud providers, what about managing these environments?
Some customers have the skills and resources to manage their cloud services, while others must rely on experts who can handle their cloud environments. Here are your options:
- Engage your current managed services provider (MSP), who might not have the knowledge to run your critical applications in the cloud
- Engage expert MSPs who are certified by the cloud providers to build, operate, and manage applications and workloads on their cloud platform
5 Challenges of Managing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure In-house
For critical applications, the complexity of workloads, contracts, architecture, and implementation demands specialized expertise that most companies may not possess internally. Furthermore, IT teams might need special skills to run, manage, and optimize applications and workloads in the cloud.
Operational Optimization
All the layers on top of the virtualization layer, like the operating system, the middleware, the database, and the application, will still require management. When you run applications on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), you will need to run diagnostics, product fixes, performance management, and various workarounds to upgrade, patch, update security features, and optimize the environment when you do it in-house. It will require niche skills to test and deploy these new features.
Limited Skills Ecosystem
As OCI is a relatively new product, finding the right consultants with the right skills to run the cloud environment might take some effort while releasing new features. To address this, OCI has a validated MSP program and certifies select partners with the “Cloud Solutions Provider Expertise” badge. It’s essential to balance the capabilities in-house with external vendor partners. While partner pedigree, expertise, and experience vary widely, your existing MSP may be more focused on on-premise support rather than using OCI as an enabler for digital transformation.
Limited Tools Ecosystem
Most organizations, especially multi-cloud customers, supplement their primary cloud platform with additional cloud management and security solutions. Some of these tools might have little or no support for OCI or existing multi-cloud needs. You can engage with an Oracle CSPE with the requisite skills to overcome these limitations.
Reliance on Oracle Technologies
OCI offers reference architecture support for non-Oracle databases but no service offerings for non-Oracle databases, nor is OCI supported by standard third-party multi-cloud database services. Oracle’s DBaaS offerings are delivered exclusively on Oracle’s proprietary technology. Customers already using Oracle may consider this an advantage as these exact solutions can be delivered as on-premises software.
Break-Fix vs. Proactive Resolutions
Chances are high that your application or system will eventually require in-house or external technical assistance. Managing your systems is more than waiting for issues to crop up and fixing them. Identifying and addressing problems before they occur ensures that critical applications are always available. While you can use out-of-the-box tools to solve such cases, the real challenge will be proactively predicting such a scenario. While an Oracle CSPE can help overcome these challenges, you must critically assess their managed services expertise, proven tools and methodologies, scripts, and pre-built templates. This can help you transition from reactive to proactive management, reducing time and effort and leveraging proven technology and processes to solve challenges in a cost-effective and timely manner.
Benefits of Oracle Managed Cloud Services
Predict System Behaviour
You can easily predict system behaviour by moving from a reactive to a proactive systems management approach. Oracle Managed Cloud Services provides consulting services for optimal installation, upgrade, and migration configuration with quick and easy implementation of new tools and technologies. You can leverage Oracle’s proprietary tools and scripts to quickly predict and resolve issues before they occur, reducing the time and effort required for system maintenance.
Certified Managed Services Experts
Oracle Managed Cloud Services provides access to certified experts trained on the OCI platform, saving you the time, money, and effort required for extensive training sessions. These certified experts come with extensive experience in executing complex cloud-managed services projects.
Increase Operational Efficiencies
You don’t have to engage multiple vendors for application management, cloud consumption, and cloud management for Oracle and non-Oracle workloads. Oracle Managed Cloud Services partners offer everything under one roof, reducing complexity and effort.
Proven Best-Practice Methodologies
High Scalability
Unpredictable demands during changing business cycles can be quickly addressed by scaling up or down resources as per your need. Application building, testing, mergers, acquisitions, or divestitures are a few scenarios where outsourcing managed services can help streamline processes and reduce the workload. With managed services, customers can also choose from onshore, offshore, or nearshore resource models to ensure 24×7 resource availability and minimize costs.
Better Compliance
You might have to bring cloud management in-house if your business has strict compliance requirements. But that comes with additional costs and effort. However, Oracle Cloud@Customer brings the cloud environment within your data center for better security and compliance.
Conclusion
It isn’t easy to decide between outsourcing cloud-managed services or keeping them in-house, especially for mission-critical applications. The best strategy is to be fully informed before making this decision, which can consume IT budgets for a long time. You can talk to our Oracle Managed Cloud Services experts, who can assess your IT needs and recommend the right solution.
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