The IT landscape has never been so challenging and full of opportunities than it is today. The cloud is here to stay, the SaaS applications have never been so available and easy to on-board. I cannot imagine anyone starting out to make a choice to install an Exchange server for e-mail, or to install any server for that matter. Why would you need a multiyear IT budget when it is so easy to subscribe to services instead?
Starting with IT outsourcing can be challenging! Where to start? The simple answer is – start small! Atea has developed Microservices to do just that while utilizing the latest technologies from Microsoft.
Let’s look at the 3 most popular means of IT outsourcing Microservices vs Managed Services vs Consultancy.
Starting with the later, consultancy is a very straight forward approach – there is a need for an expert to perform a certain action and he or she gets hired for a limited set of hours to complete it. What’s not to like? Spend money only when you need it. The truth is more complicated. In our infrastructure projects we have seen that often consultancy is used as a “fire and forget” project. Meaning after the consultant leaves, no further action, maintenance, monitoring or improvements are done by the customer’s own resources. Often when our consultant returns on-site a year later everything is the same as when he or she left. With the current global security threats being high in IT, it is a risk for the business to just rely on occasional consultancy projects.
Often consultancy is used as a “fire and forget” project, so after the consultant leaves, no further action, maintenance, monitoring or improvements are done by the customer’s own resources!
Managed Services or general IT outsourcing is the opposite of consultancy. This puts the responsibility on the Service Provider to perform certain actions and monitoring at regular, often daily, intervals. The IT infrastructure is better maintained, there are SLAs put in place and the Service Provider has multiple people working on multiple customers building up experience and knowledge beyond what one organization internal IT department can achieve. Then why not everyone uses it today? Short answer is price, time and complexity. To perform end-user device management or large Azure infrastructure management there is a lengthy process to define the outsourcing parameters for a tender, technical complexities of business specific software and processes and last but not least is the cost & time of the responsibility transition to the service provider not to lose delivery quality and speed. In other words, these projects can become lengthy.
Finally, we come to Microservices. The services are small, fine-grained to perform single functionality, organized around capabilities and can be deployed independently. With an easy on-boarding process, it is a turn-key solution from Atea to improve stability, security, productivity of IT infrastructure and Device Management. For example, with Atea Foresight microservice that utilizes Windows Analytics from Microsoft, our customers can benefit from Infrastructure Expert led monitoring of the customer’s end-user devices without installing anything or buying new licenses. Based on reports, our experts will validate current IT environment configuration, point out problematic areas and continuously suggest and monitor improvements over time.
Microservices are small, fine-grained services meant to perform single functionality, organized around capabilities and be deployed independently!
All 3 methods work well for extending an IT departments competency by utilizing outside experts. Consultancy is best for ad hoc projects and planned migrations. Managed Services are best for turning the responsibility of daily operations to a service provider and focus on core business instead. Microservices are best to outsource small portions or function. Our microservices are designed to get the most out of new technologies that exist today and will exist tomorrow. Be it productivity or security targets, it can be achieved much easier with the help of Atea.
Read more about our Managed services and Microservices.