Moving IT to the cloud is an evolutionary change, similar to other developments in industrial history.
For instance, back in the day, factories had to generate their own electricity to run their supply chain, which used valuable resources, both manpower and money. More than half of the resources were spent on making sure there was enough power to run the machines, rather than focusing 100% of them on manufacturing the company’s product.
That started to change in the late 1800s with the appearance of the first public electricity supply. At this point, factories could now focus all of their energy on what they did best, their business’s mission, rather than investing energy into making energy.
Metaphorically speaking, managing your own cloud environment today is a lot like generating your own electricity. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s cumbersome and wastes internal resources. But many organizations resist moving to MSPs. Let’s look at history to see why many organizations are stuck in the past.
The History Of IT Services And MSPs
In the early days of computer technology, repairs were performed only when needed, based on a break-fix model. An in-house IT technician or off-site contractor would be called to remedy issues as they arose. If they couldn’t solve the issue, a managed service specialist would be called in to make the necessary, and often costly, repairs.
In the early 1990s, the person who built the computers for the company would be the one who came to service and repair them. However, there was no guarantee that this person would be able to come immediately.
Another major drawback of the break-fix model was troubleshooting inefficiencies. The tools used to service the ever-changing computer systems couldn’t keep up with new technologies. This often resulted in repair delays and failures.
In addition, the IT technician would have to do periodic on-site reviews of the infrastructure to find hints of issues before they escalated into massive problems. Unfortunately, the technician could only observe what was happening on the day of their visit, so many issues would remain undiscovered.
Clearly, the break-fix method was not the right way to keep a company’s IT infrastructure running optimally. The need for a better solution led to the managed service provider (MSP) format.
The Early Days of MSPs
Most managed service operations took shape in the late 1990s, built around the assumption that infrastructure would remain purely physical. Data centers were simply racks of servers, so the IT processes were designed around thousands of people in call centers staring at screens.
This people-oriented setup translates to a completely manual process. When customers have an issue, it has to go through different stages of support, resulting in a slow, inefficient process. Despite MSPs being an upgrade for IT solutions, some obvious shortcomings still remain.
If you’re looking for a modern-day remedy, the cloud is it.
The Advantages Of Cloud Automation
Traditional managed services are incredibly slow. It can take weeks to remedy an issue. But with cloud automation, that same issue can be resolved in moments. Aside from speed, cloud solutions offer five main advantages:
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Efficiency: You can focus wholly on what you do best when someone else is handling the IT. At Cloudticity, we’ve created systems that help you focus 100% of your internal resources on the job at hand.
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Security: Your work is protected with HITRUST certification and guaranteed to remain HIPAA-compliant.
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Availability: Your system and apps won’t go down. You won’t be stuck with a 502 error, which can be life-threatening in the healthcare industry.
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Performance: Your systems operate quickly. Cloud automation ensures fast system response times to increase overall user experience.
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Cost: You get cloud automation at a highly optimized price point. That means you get the fastest performance at a lower cost.
You can only get all of these benefits with automation. When developers can focus fully on their jobs instead of maintenance processes such as patching and compliance, your company will be more innovative and grow faster.
Cloud Automation In Action: Cloudticity And MiHIN
At Cloudticity, we worked with MiHIN to help the organization transition to the AWS cloud. MiHIN is a public and private nonprofit collaboration dedicated to improving the healthcare experience for Michigan residents.
With more than 12 million patient health information messages passing through MiHIN’s network each week, the company’s co-located data centers couldn’t scale to keep pace with the growing amounts of data.
MiHIN also sought to reduce costs. Its data centers required considerable expenditures and continued maintenance, and an expanding stakeholder base demanded new levels of flexibility. The rigidity of the hardware also meant the organization couldn’t respond to customer requests to launch new services and features, hampering MiHIN’s capacity for innovation and responsiveness.
By moving MiHIN’s exchange from physical data centers to the AWS cloud, Cloudticity helped MiHIN address the need for scalability, cost savings, and flexibility while also adopting tools that enabled more security and agility in managing patient information.
One of the ways Cloudticity continues to help MiHIN stay secure on AWS is through the use of predefined assets and templates deployed through AWS service catalog. This allows MiHIN to use Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), vetted against CIS profiles I and II. Since moving to AWS, MiHIN has been building highly available applications and solutions at a rapid pace.
Looking Ahead
To date, the majority of healthcare providers have not yet transitioned to cloud managed services, leaving plenty of room for growth and optimization. Healthcare providers that transition to a fully automated cloud-based MSP will be able to get ahead of the rapidly evolving technological landscape and set themselves up to be leaders in innovation.
