How to Choose a Cloud Managed Services Provider?

We have recently witnessed growing interest from Canadian businesses toward public cloud service providers. Several reasons can explain this shift:

• The fact that acquiring new servers is costlier since applications are more and more energy-consuming in terms of hardware resources and technical requirements.
• Clients want the opportunity to use hardware resources for short periods or on demand to meet specific needs at specific times.
• Clients are unwilling to take forward the idea of hiring people to manage this increasingly complex infrastructure, which requires more and more diverse knowledge.

What Is a Cloud Service Provider?

Cloud service providers developed dozens, if not hundreds of functionalities that can be accessed through the service portfolio to address several business needs, such as analytics, the Internet of Things, machine learning, and more. Each of these providers also delivers a very high level of security and meets the highest cybersecurity standards in the industry.

For a company starting out in this world, understanding the differences between public cloud service providers can prove complex since the terminology varies among them; it’s easy to lose track! That is why, by entering into partnerships with several public cloud service providers, we can advise you and guide you in your choice. We can also make sure that the services you choose fit your business needs.

The pricing model also varies between on demand, and based on a one- or three-year agreement, depending on the size of the services. The longer the term of the agreement, the cheaper the services. For example, a three-year agreement for a virtual environment could result in a 70 % price reduction and therefore stand up well in comparison to on-demand pricing.

What Kind of Cloud Managed Services Can You Expect From Your Partner?

Our role is to advise you, discuss the differences between the offerings, and help in you in making the right choice of provider for your business needs, whether it is Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure. For example, from an SAP perspective, to ensure support in the manufacturing industry, some virtual environment models are authorized regarding the HANA database system. Making the right choice also ensures optimal performances. Several other factors need to be considered when an SAP instance is deployed in the virtual environment of a public cloud partner: the type of support, storage, monitoring, backup strategy, and many more.

How to Migrate to Your Cloud Solutions Provider?

After having chosen the services and analyzed the virtual resources required, you should develop a plan for the migration of your environment toward your cloud solutions provider. That plan should include the migration sequence, and should more importantly address the impact it will have on the various users and satellite systems to prevent their unavailability to the business during the actual migration. The environments will need to be reconnected since the IP address will have changed.

What Are the Best Practices for Your Cloud Migration?

The first step consists of laying out the landing zone, i.e., the initial steps for a secure account configuration. It also includes the establishment of a secure network link, either dedicated or Internet-based, between your local data center/HQ and your cloud provider.

The next step is the configuration of virtual environments that fit the specified/required size for the proper functioning of the application. There are several scenarios for the migration of your application to the cloud solution. This step will be completed at the time of the proof of concept (PoC).

The migration then carries on to the sandbox (SBX), development environment (DEV), quality assurance (QAS) and, finally, the production system (PRD). During each of these migrations, the reconnection to satellite systems should be done, and a series of tests should be conducted to make sure everything runs smoothly.

We will support you at each step of the process.

Why Is Createch the Best Cloud Managed Services Partner in Canada?

To sum up, we will walk you through each step of your migration to a cloud solution: selection, gathering prerequisites, configuration, laying out of the landing zone, migration of all of your environments, and post-migration support. Createch’s offering is a turnkey solution that allows you to benefit from the expertise of an integrator at each step of the process, and to have support at any time after the completion of the migration. Consequently, you can focus on the activities that add value to your company.

Thanks to Createch’s privileged relationships with Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services (AWS), we are a partner of choice for your digital transformation, and migration toward cloud solutions. What we offer is deep knowledge of the different products and cloud solutions, in-house expertise about the various resources, and the ability to walk you through each step of the process, from sales to technical support. Contact us right away to get your project started!