Staffing Services: The Details- What you need to know!

Staffing Services: The Details- What you need to know!

By: Amanda Hawthorne, Director of People and Culture at Managed Solution

So you’ve got an opening or resource need on your team? Exciting! Managed Solution’s Staffing Services can help! But knowing where to start with an outside recruiting firm can be tough, and you may have a lot of questions about the process…

There are plenty of choices for service providers: so how do you know which is going to deliver?

Sometimes the exact resource or budget requirements for your position may be a bit hazy, and you may still be sorting out how exactly a new hire will engage within your team. Who can help you define your needs and understand a market-realistic hiring budget?

Everyone is already stretched thin today, and no one has time to interview a series of candidates who completely miss the mark. Working with a trusted Staffing Service provider like Managed Solution can help you quickly connect with pre-vetted technical talent so you can make efficient staffing decisions and get back to work with the right team!

Why You Can Trust Managed Solution to Deliver Top Talent

Managed Solution is an IT service provider – which means IT people are our business. For over 20 years, we’ve been meeting talented engineers and connecting them with our clients across Southern California (and beyond!) to fulfill ongoing support or even project-based needs. In the age of remote work and the “Great Resignation,” it’s more important than ever to hire highly skilled and vetted engineering talent – and even harder to find them!

After hearing from client after client about the challenges they’re having in finding and vetting top talent, we saw an opportunity here: open our Talent Community to our clients, giving them access to the amazing people we’re meeting daily. (And as a bonus, individuals in our Talent Community have already been vetted by our Microsoft-certified engineers!)

Plus, since hiring our Talent Advisor, Kat Grunzinger, we now have a talent concierge to meet with our clients and really dive into their needs, to help define an opportunity for efficient recruiting. Kat has years of experience in the recruiting space and has a true knack for building quick rapport with candidates, diving into what they know (and don’t), as well as understanding what opportunities are truly of interest to them. She leverages this same inquisitive nature to consult with clients to understand what Staffing Services are best-suited to their needs – and which candidates will really fit the bill!

What You Need to Know When Getting Started with Managed Solution’s Talent Advisor

You may be asking, what’s it like to work with Managed Solution’s Talent Advisor?

Here’s what you can expect:

First, Our Talent Advisor will want to interview you! We’ve found the best way to understand the true needs of an organization isn’t to rely on a job description (which may be out of date or miss key aspects of what a position truly requires), but to go straight to the source: you!

As a hiring manager, you’ll have insight into your needs, your team, and your organization – even if you haven’t scoped out a formal job description yet, or if you haven’t gotten the chance yet to update the one that’s been on file for years.

Our Talent Advisor can help you outline the specific function that’s needed. She’ll be aiming to understand the ins and outs of your open role, so she can connect you to the right resources. Key questions she’ll ask include:

  1. What function or role will this person play in your organization or project? Do you need someone to take charge and lead a team? Someone to execute tasks already outlined in a project plan? Someone your end users can trust to solve their issues in a responsive and friendly manner?
  2. What skills & experience are essential for their success? Are you seeking a well-rounded IT generalist with demonstrated success in a particular industry? A helpdesk superstar already proficient with a specific ticketing system and Office365 administration? An SQL wizard?
  3. Who will this person interact with most often? What people skills would make someone most successful in those interactions? Every team has a different style, and Our Talent Advisor knows a successful candidate will be a value-add to your existing team culture. Is your team highly process oriented or working in a compliance-heavy environment? Operating in a start-up mentality where adaptability is key? Our Talent Advisor wants to know so we can present candidates who are ready to jump in and be successful!
  4. What is the available budget and target market for hiring? Are you looking for an onsite resource in your downtown Los Angeles office, or flexible to find someone fully remote from anywhere in the nation? Do you have budget for a full-time internal hire, or will you be looking to staff a temporary need with an external position on an hourly bill rate?

Our Talent Advisor will ask these key questions so she understands exactly what this individual will be doing on a day-to-day basis and how their success will be defined. This will help her articulate the opportunity to potential candidates - and help us avoid wasting your time with candidates who would fall short of expectations. This understanding will allow her to scroll through her mental Rolodex of people in our Talent Community so she can quickly connect you with any pre-vetted candidates that might align with your goals.

Understanding your needs can also help us align our Staffing Service offering with your ‘ask’ to ensure we’re helping you meet your need in a cost-effective manner.

How Managed Solution Approaches Staffing Services

Managed Solution offers several different Staffing Services to meet your IT hiring needs:

When our Talent Advisor meets with you to discuss your team’s needs, she’ll help you determine which Staffing Service is right for you.

How a Strong Rapport with Your Talent Advisor Helps You Hire Better, Faster

Once a Staffing Service Agreement is signed, she’ll begin sorting through our existing connections within our Talent Community and will reach out to appropriate passive candidates on your behalf.

When we find suitable candidates – aligned to your role in terms of experience, skills, location, culture, and career goals – we’ll pre-vet them with our Microsoft-certified engineers and then present you with their talent profiles (a fancy term for their resumes, catered to your position). Ideally, they’ll all look good on paper, and then it’s time for you and your teams to interview!

Our Talent Advisor will work with you to define your own vetting process for the opening – who will be involved in the interviews; when/how interviews will be conducted; etc. Then, she’ll coordinate scheduling and share pertinent information to the candidate so they can be on-time and ready to discuss your opportunity, whether that’s in person at your office, or via Microsoft Teams video interview. (We can even send out a Microsoft Teams meeting bridge for you and the candidate to connect on!)

During the interview, you’ll get a sense of your own as to whether the candidate meets the eligibility and suitability requirements of your role. Our Talent Advisor will check in after your interviews to hear about what went well, what concerns still linger, and what next steps look like. Our Talent Advisor will also get feedback from the candidate to ensure a strong mutual fit before moving ahead in the process. This two-way flow of information and feedback is one essential for effective recruiting services – and helps ensure that by the time an offer is issued, you’re confident it will be accepted.

Having a strong rapport with your Talent Advisor can help you move through the hiring process faster, more effectively, and with the outcomes you’re looking for. Sometimes hiring managers hesitate to share negative feedback about a candidate’s skills or experience (because who likes giving bad news?), but we encourage open communication during this process. Understanding exactly what is or isn’t working helps us ensure a better outcome on the next candidate. And if things are going well, timely communication is even more important: you’re more likely to get an enthusiastic “yes!” in response to an offer when the candidate feels the process has moved along at a natural clip, and they’ve received timely, positive feedback. Plus, a strong rapport with your Talent Advisor also allows her to share honest feedback from candidates about your position, interview process, and the candidate experience.

What details Talent Advisor Wants You to Know

Want the inside scoop about working with our Staffing Services professionals? We sat down recently with Kat Grunzinger, Managed Solution’s Talent Advisor, to talk about her professional background in recruiting and her hopes for Managed Solution’s Staffing Services.

Here’s what Kat Grunzinger, Managed Solution’s Talent Advisor, wants you to know!

Q: What do you want a hiring manager to know about you?

A: “I want hiring managers to know that I’ve been in their seat! I know how challenging it can be to find, vet, and hire the right people for the right positions.  That level of empathy drives me to move quickly across the process – jumping onto an intake call, running through recent conversations to see if there are any immediately ‘right’ candidates, proactively sourcing talent across multiple platforms, and being timely in scheduling and feedback. I will earn the hiring manager's trust by active listening to quickly understand an opening; by being flexible and available for their calls; by following through on any action items outlined; and by reassuring them that I’m here for them! I feel most successful when I know we’ve done the right thing for the client.”

Q: What drew you to recruiting and what’s your favorite part of the process?

A: “I love getting to meet talented individuals and hearing their stories and learning what they want out of their careers – and then getting to help make that happen! It’s a privilege to assist in their journeys, and I take seriously that we are talking about a person’s livelihood. The same care I take in building relationships of trust with hiring managers, I apply to our Talent Community. My goal is to facilitate transparent, two-way communication. I’m not afraid to tell a candidate when a job isn’t going to help them meet their goals because it frees them up to find the opportunities that are right.”

Q: What should a hiring manager know about your job to make the relationship more effective?

A: “Honest and open communication matters. Not only is this aligned with Managed Solution’s values and Code of Conduct, it’s truly critical for recruiting and other Staffing Services. A hiring manager needs to be honest and realistic about budgets, the true needs of their team, – and sometimes as an outside entity, I’m able to help them see another side of the coin. Whether that’s advising the client about the right pay scale for a position with a specific region or helping them see that their job description is unrealistic (or describes three different jobs), I really appreciate when hiring managers value this two-way feedback. I think it brings us more credibility as recruiters and ultimately helps clients fill their needs.

I think it’s also important for a hiring manager to understand that my role as a recruiter is to help sell the value of an organization or position to candidates. The time we invest up front in an intake call positions me to effectively communicate with potential candidates about the roles, and to proactively answer the questions they have. We’ll both spend more time talking to the right people if a hiring manager spends the time with me up front to help me learn how their team functions, what types of soft skills help someone thrive, and what perks/benefits exist within their organizations. I’ll definitely do the right homework on my side to read the job description, the company website, and more before that meeting, but there’s nothing like learning straight from the hiring manager how the team is doing and what it needs.”

Q: What are your hopes for Managed Solution’s Staffing Services?

A: “My hope is that we can continue building trust with our clients, as we succeed in connecting them with qualified talent. I know I’ve done my job when a client comes back for help with another opening or refers us to their colleague for assistance on a role. Continuing to help good people find fulfilling work with amazing organizations – that’s what it’s all about!”

Ready to hand over the heavy lifting to us? Email us about our Staffing Services today!

Is the Azure cloud really right for your business?

By Spencer Duke

The cloud isn’t necessarily new anymore, but businesses are still determining whether or not it’s the right move for them, and for good reason.

First, let’s look at the three cloud options available:

  1. Public cloud: A public cloud is a type of computing in which a service provider (such as Microsoft, Google, or AWS) makes resources available to the public, allowing for scaling and resource sharing.
  2. Private cloud: A private cloud works similarly to a public cloud, but over a private internal network and is only available to specific users.
  3. Hybrid cloud: A Hybrid Cloud is a combination of public and private clouds, utilizing software to enable connection and communication between data and applications.

Today, we’ll be talking about the public cloud, specifically Microsoft Azure. In this article, you’ll learn:

The Top Business Drivers for Microsoft Azure

It’s critical that you first determine your reason for moving to the cloud. It can’t be because it’s what everyone is talking about or doing. Cloud has become a buzzword, and we are here to remove the buzz-wordiness and really dive into “why cloud?”

First start with honing on what you’re trying to accomplish by migrating to Azure? What is the business initiative that Azure will solve?

Questions can include:

  1. Is our business expanding?
  2. Are we trying to have more flexible remote workforce?
  3. Are we trying to make our environment more resilient and highly-available?

The challenge is simple: if we take our existing infrastructure that we have on premise, including servers and storage, and we just take exactly that and we put it in Azure, we’re not really taking advantage of what Azure can do.

That said, let’s look at 4 main drivers: scalability, cost-reduction, security, and manageability.

Want to better understand if Azure is right for your organization? See if you qualify for a free Azure Migrate assessment today!

Cloud Scalability

Here’s a good use case.

Businesses are hungrier than ever for analytics and automation. A lot of companies are fully or at least partially remote, so you can’t simply walk down the hall to the Director of Sales and get the latest sales pipeline information. You can’t walk down the hall to HR and ask where we’re at in the hiring process. The list goes on.

That’s why reporting and data are so important today. If you're trying to combine data from different departments; for example your CRM and your accounting software, you can integrate these into a cloud-hosted business intelligence platform like PowerBI to help you gather data all in one place and make data-backed business decisions.

Azure is a feature rich platform. Make sure if you’re going to move there, you have a use case like the on above, so you can take advantage of the features available.

There’s a common understanding that if you move to the cloud, it’s going to be less expensive.

Cost: CapEx vs OpEx

Many businesses want to move to the cloud to reduce spend.

There’s a common understanding that if you move to the cloud, it’s going to be less expensive.

That’s not always the case. Let’s dive deeper.

If you move your existing infrastructure exactly as is, it may not be cheaper. There needs to be thoughtful analysis, planning and optimization of resources to take advantage of the consumption-based cloud model.

Things you need to consider when looking at cost include:

  1. Is your business running 24/7?
  2. What applications make sense to move?
  3. How are my current resources being utilized?
  4. How can we modernize to take advantage of a consumption-based model?

If you have resources that are used periodically, we can leverage automation within Azure. With those resources not being powered up all the time, and aren’t available, then we don’t need them incurring costs.

On the flip side, if we have resources that we know are 24/7, we can take advantage of reserved instance pricing.

All that said, it’s important to look at your data and applications, what’s running when, how much compute it needs, etc to see if financially the cloud is a viable option for you.

Is the Azure Cloud secure?

In a short answer, yes.

In a longer answer, it depends.

In terms of physical security, there’s absolutely an inherent benefit. Put simply, you're never going to build your own hosted infrastructure to the scale that public datacenters have.  The physical security includes gates, guard, cameras, and more.

In terms of technical security, this becomes something proactive we need to implement, manage, and continually optimize. Some tools for security optimization include Windows Virtual Desktop and securing that with MFA.

In conclusion, just sticking your data in Azure doesn’t make you secure, but it does open doors that you wouldn’t otherwise have had access to, and therefore you can drastically improve your security posture if you utilize these features.

In terms of physical security, there’s absolutely an inherent benefit. Put simply, you're never going to build your own hosted infrastructure to the scale that public datacenters have.

Azure’s Manageability

Another common conversation that we typically come across with smaller teams (and sometimes larger) is around manageability.

Clients will come to us wanting to move to Azure to minimize manageability. On-premises, you’re managing all the physical components including your own infrastructure, server(s), hardware (including the refresh cycles), the contracts, warranties, troubleshooting random issues, failed disks, the list goes on and on.

All that goes away when you move to the cloud. However, there is a learning curve in the beginning. It’s still a new system you must figure out.

Short-term you may have to spend some time with it, but long-term, you end up with a single pane of glass and better tools to see exactly what’s going on in terms of data and analytics inside your infrastructure. This type of reporting includes what your infrastructure is doing, what it's costing to run specific resources. There’s also added feature benefits like the ability to fail over and manage, disaster recovery scenarios.

The manageability of the platform is great, but let’s level the expectations. If your primary goal is to alleviate management from internal IT staff and free them up to do other things, just expect that learning curve, especially in the beginning,

See if Azure if right for you with an Azure Migrate assessment. See if you qualify for a free assessment today!

Who Should Be Involved in Your Decision to Migrate to Azure?

Who exactly should be a part of your discovery phase conversations?

Technology no longer sits just in the IT department, so while we often don’t want too many cooks in the kitchen, it’s important to involve key stakeholders from different departments and at the very least should include the CEO, CFO, and CTO/CIO (or whoever is your IT lead).

During the discovery phase, you’ll want to focus on two main things: the business use case(s) specific to your organization as well as the actual assessment itself. In other words, what is the data telling you?

The business use case is more important than running the tool. It's still very important to run the technical tool and get our cost analytics and data. But remember, Azure is a tool, and it wouldn't make any sense for me to implement a tool that isn't solving a problem for the business.

During the discovery phase, you’ll want to focus on two main things: the business use case(s) specific to your organization as well as the actual assessment itself. In other words, what is the data telling you?

The Top Considerations when Moving to Microsoft Azure

Ideally once we've talked about the business use cases, then then we need to look at our current environment. There are 3 main components to look at both technically and non-technically, and are all of equal importance.

Connectivity and Latency

Traditionally, if we're hosting our own infrastructure, our network infrastructure was largely housed in that office, which works well for the traditional client server applications. When we're looking at migrating that infrastructure to Azure, we want to know how our applications and services are going to be affected by that. This is because what we're doing is we're separating the client from the infrastructure that they're interacting with, and that can cause performance issues. Essentially, it could negatively impact the users’ productivity. and we want to really avoid that at all costs and figure out how we can overcome it.

When you go to move these things, you immediately create latency between wherever it was to where it's going in Azure. What we need to find out to know if Azure migration makes sense is looking at individual server roles, services and applications and seeing what latency and network requirements they have and how those can met by Azure. If not everything is compatible, a hybrid solution could work. Hybrid scenario - initial investment on IT infrastructure & connectivity, servers, etc. Biz requirements change you need more storage, remote users. Instead of another large capex, you could solve storage or compute, by putting that workload in Azure

We really want to figure out how our applications and services are going to be affected by that change, which brings us to our next point…

The End User Experience

The end user experience ties into latency because if latency is poor, that affects the end user. We need to figure out how will that negatively impact the department or company - whoever is using these resources? Are we creating a net new server and this is an upgrade or move to a different version or are we moving it as is? In relationship to end user impact and latency, does anything change in regard to accessing information? How are processes affected? What changes in usability are there? Do they need to log in to VPN, use remote app, etc? It’s important to note that adoption rate will be large factor in success/failure

The ideal goal is that the end user experience gets better, but oftentimes it's, it's kind of an afterthought and documentation was poor, or training or communication was poor. We want to make sure those things are at the forefront of our decisions to make sure that users can still connect and aren’t disrupted and have what they need to be successful.

Cloud Costs

Once we've overcome the technical components and understand how our end user experience will be affected, we need to look at costs. We can do this by running cost analytics inside Azure Migrate. During this assessment, we want to look at this new infrastructure we're going to implement and its features and see how we are going to benefit. If the pros outweigh the cons, then the costs might be worth it to migrate. You can also look at Virtual Machine sizing, storage sizing and rightsizing your environment based on your budget.

Next Steps for Migrating to Azure

At the end of the discovery and assessment, you can better understand your business goals as they relate to the cloud, technical limitations and requirements, and changes that need to happen.

What the assessment will tell us if we're seeing if the recommendations align with our performance requirements and budget. Once we have all that information and we have a path forward that gives us a solid foundation to the build a scope of work and a project plan

It’s critical to look at your potential cloud migration from both a business and technical perspective because those lines are becoming more blurred as time goes on. It’s imperative to make sure that your goals align with the technology you’re using.

What Are the Best Microsoft Products and Tools Today?

Pretty much everyone who's been around a computer knows about Microsoft. That said, not that many people know about some of the best Microsoft products and tools in use today. To that end, we've compiled a short list of such products, particularly useful for businesses of varying sizes.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service used for building, testing, deploying, and managing various applications and services through data centers managed by Microsoft. The tool provides infrastructure as a service (IaaS),  software as a service (SaaS), and platform as a service (PaaS). It also supports many programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including most Microsoft as well as third-party software.

Microsoft SharePoint

Microsoft SharePoint Online is a cloud-based service that allows users to create, design, and manage workspaces, contents, and sites. It also enables users to share digital documents securely among team members within or outside of the organization and across multiple devices.

You can use SharePoint to build customized web-based applications to solve various business issues. It also offers many out-of-the-box features to create websites, content management, and community building. With SharePoint Online, you will be able to create custom apps, deploy them into App Catalog, and can integrate almost any cloud-based application.

Microsoft PowerApps

Microsoft PowerApps is an enterprise service that allows companies to develop so-called "no-code apps." The tool is available for different operating systems, including Windows, iOS, and Android. It offers built-in connections, allowing it to integrate your apps with other cloud and on-premises services. This can include things such as Azure, Salesforce, SharePoint, OneDrive, SQL Service, Dynamic CRM, etc.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is an all-encompassing digital hub aimed at teamwork and collaboration. It's able to bring people, conversations, and applications together into one place for seamless communication and file sharing. Microsoft Teams is integrated with other Office 365 services, allowing it to utilize tools like Word, Excel, Delve, PowerBI, PowerApps, SharePoint, and more.

It's also easy to add a tab for each of these services in your channel within Teams, making it a smooth user experience overall. Also, you can add third-party tools and services such as Facebook, GitHub, Yammer, or RSS feeds, depending on your needs or your day-to-day work. Microsoft Teams also allows for video calls, meetings, and voice, working across multiple platforms such as Mac, Android, iOS, and, of course, Windows.

Microsoft Power BI

Power BI is a cloud-based analytics service. It allows companies to see their most critical business data in a single view. The platform will also be able to create interactive reports that monitor the wellbeing of the organization. You can transform hard data into more compelling and stunning visuals to share with colleagues.

It allows users to collaborate and share customized dashboards and interactive reports, while also scaling across the organization using built-in governance and security. Users can also access Power BI on multiple devices such as their web browsers, tablets, smartphones, PCs, or laptops.

agile-and-productive-digital-workplace

Why Companies are Taking the Hybrid Cloud Approach

Hybrid cloud approaches have seen a steady rise in popularity among organizations. A hybrid cloud approach refers to incorporating the benefits of company-owned private clouds, public cloud services, and the more traditional dedicated hosting services. Each of these has its pros and cons, and companies are starting to take advantage of what each has to offer while also minimizing the potential risks that come attached.

It was the concern over the security of public clouds that have led many to turn to hybrid models, in the first place. For instance, businesses will make use of the privacy and security that private clouds have to offer, while still benefiting from the flexibility and easy scalability of public clouds. Below are some of the main reasons why organizations are steadily moving towards hybrid cloud methods.

More Flexibility

One of the most immediate benefits of such a hybrid system is that it allows companies to manage their applications and databases more effectively. On the one hand, they can host their important data on private clouds and/or dedicated servers, where they will have absolute control. On the other hand, they will use the available public cloud space for faster and easier scalability. They'll be able to test out new applications on the public cloud, determining their feasibility, among other such benefits.

So, as you steadily reach your limit, you can easily and seamlessly migrate entire services and applications to the public cloud. If you do need to scale down, you'll be able to take the same action in reverse. This enhanced flexibility and the ability to mix these functionalities based on your own needs is what draws so many companies to hybrid clouds.

Enhanced Security

When you are using a third-party, public cloud system to store all of your sensitive data, you are leaving yourself exposed to all sorts of possible risks. You will need to take into account all security problems, compliance issues, and performance requirements, which indicates that private clouds are also a good alternative. When using a hybrid cloud, you can choose which services will be on the public cloud and which will remain on the private one. In addition, when you're also using a public cloud, you're not overcrowding your private and secure space.

Lower Costs 

An organization that uses a hybrid cloud approach will almost always experience lower costs than a company that is exclusive with either one or the other. Hybrid clouds allow you to pay-as-you-need, meaning that you will have complete control over your IT expenses. You'll still have your backups in the cloud, which further reduce the costs. And with public cloud services, such as Azure or AWS, you can accurately determine your exact requirements without having to overpay for something you won't use.

Innovation Opportunities

With the ability to test and develop new applications on the public cloud, you can focus more of your efforts of this process without having to worry about ever exceeding your limits. This will reduce your potential costs of failure and give you access to an immense potential for scalability. In such an environment, the probabilities of innovation are greatly enhanced without having to sacrifice privacy or security in doing so. You'll not have to rearrange your infrastructure to test out a new service when using a hybrid cloud.

Multi-Cloud is a Reality

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]San Diego, CA, January 31, 2019. AITP San Diego and Managed Solution hosted an exclusive CIO panel on multi-cloud strategy. Representatives of Western Digital, Stone Brewing, UCSD, Scripps Health and Managed Solution shared their experience with establishing multiple cloud environments and challenges they faced along the way. They agreed that multi-cloud is a reality for businesses, and the only open question is whether your business will be reactive or proactive in the approach.

Steve Phillpott, Chief Information Officer at Western Digital, underlined two main facts regarding the cloud: “You own the security - cloud will give you a lot of additional capabilities, but you own it and need to make sure you are secure. Regarding cost, make sure you’re not wasting money by keeping colder, less frequently accessed data in the Cloud.”

Christian Aboujaoude, Senior Director Enterprise Architecture at Scripps Health, explained how cloud affected them: “We started to change our IT business model by leveraging the cloud as an extension of our infrastructure, helping to structure services in a more cost-effective fashion for our patients. Going to the Cloud was a shift for us. However, it did introduce flexibility and scaling especially when leveraged as a service. We had a lot of partners and vendors we work with which lead us down the road of using the major cloud carriers such as Azure or AWS promoting the use of a multi-Cloud strategy.”

Brian Andrews, Chief Information and Administrative Office at Stone Brewing: “Stone embarked on our cloud journey five years ago, supporting our business expansion and optimization with Software-as-a-Service applications and Infrastructure-as-a-Service. A recent example of the benefit was being able to double the size of our website infrastructure in minutes to support a big spike in traffic after announcing our new Enter Night Pilsner collaboration with Metallica.” Stone Brewing, headquartered in Escondido, California, has grown to become the 8th largest craft brewery in the country among 7,000 breweries. Stone has used cloud to scale nationally and internationally while reducing costs and driving business value.

Sean Ferrel, Chairman and Founder at Managed Solution, explained, that when making IT decisions we need to we need to first talk about what business problem we are trying to solve and not talk so much about the technology tools we like best: “Yes, we all have the painters, framers, plumbers and electricians who implement these tools but if we don’t have a great blueprint for what we want to build the result will be less impactful for the business.” Sean added where he sees technology going next: “We need to think about cost management, movement between data centers, aggregation of cloud providers and optimization of data resulting in business intelligence for our businesses.”

The panel was moderated by the newly elected President of AITP San Diego Donna Hale.

AITP San Diego serves the San Diego professional community by providing a forum to present issues and trends relating to the management of information.[/vc_column_text][grve_callout title="Book a consulting session" heading="h4" button_text="Contact us" button_link="url:https%3A%2F%2Fmanagedsolut.wpengine.com%2Fcontact-us%2F||target:%20_blank|"]Don't let your multi-cloud strategy happen accidentally. Let us help you with a 30 min FREE consultation with our cloud experts.[/grve_callout][grve_gallery gallery_type="carousel" ids="30614,30615,30616,30617,30626,30628,30629,30630,30631,30619"][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The First Steps for a Successful Cloud Migration

Migrating to the cloud can be an incredibly lucrative endeavor for any business looking to streamline their day-to-day operations and optimize their processes; knowing the first steps for a successful cloud migration is very important. To begin, it is important to note that there are plenty of benefits in the migration to a cloud, but three of them quickly come to mind.

On the one hand, cloud computing helps to lower data storage costs by a significant margin. Also, flexibility and scalability are all but guaranteed, allowing you to scale this storage space whenever you need to. On the other hand, however, moving to the public cloud will enable you to increase your IT team without any extra costs attached. Keep in mind that once you've partnered up with a provider, they will become an extension of your IT department, as they will be the ones managing and maintaining the data center.

Nevertheless, the cloud migration process can quickly become a hassle without the proper knowledge, planning, and execution. Only slightly above a quarter of businesses engaged in cloud migration reported that they were "extremely satisfied" with their overall cloud migration experience. Despite this low percentage and with the proper information, the benefits are well worth the investment.

Below are the first steps for successful and seamless cloud migration.

Choosing the Right Cloud Provider

The selection of your future cloud provider should not be taken lightly. There are plenty to choose from, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. While some may focus on scalability, others offer better-personalized applications management options. Among the most popular choices, you can choose among companies such as Amazon, Microsoft's Azure, Google, IBM, and the list can go on.

When making this decision, don't merely go for the market leader but take a moment to consider whether their services align with your own business goals. Also, take into account the long-term relationship you will have with this provider. It's not a very time or cost-effective strategy to choose one business only to change it later.

The Level of Cloud Integration

There are two ways of migrating your application. On the one side, there's the shallow cloud integration, while on the other, there's the deep cloud integration. 

The shallow cloud integration - It is when you move all on-premise applications to the cloud but conducts minimal changes or none at all, to the servers used to run those applications. The changes that are made are only enough to allow the applications to function within the new environment. It means that you will not use any cloud-based services.

The deep cloud integration - This procedure implies that you modify your application during the migration process to make use of critical cloud capabilities. Among these, there are such capabilities like dynamic load balancing, auto-scaling, serverless computing capabilities, or cloud-specific data stores.

Cloud KPIs

You will also have to establish your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These are metrics about your application or service used to measure how these perform based on your expectations. These KPIs will help you to determine how your cloud migration is doing, showcasing any problems that may exist with your application, as well as when the movement was complete and successful.

Some of these cloud KPIs may refer to the user experience, such as page load time, lag, or session duration. Regarding infrastructure, some KPIs may include disk performance, memory usage, or CPU usage. And as far as business engagement is concerned, there are conversion and engagement rates, as well as cart adds. 

Conclusion

While these are the first steps that you need to consider when migrating to the cloud, other issues may interest you as well. In the end, it all boils down to what your business needs and hopes to achieve from this migration, in the first place. For more information on cloud migration and cloud computing, in general, feel free to visit our website or contact us directly.

 

IT Trends for 2019 That You Should Incorporate in Next Year's Budget

Our fast-paced society is moving at such a high rate; it’s almost impossible to keep up with all the future trends that may pop-up around the corner. That is, of course, if you do not have specialists and trend analysts inside your company that study anything that could be the next big thing in IT in 2019, and in the years to come.

Trends, when it comes to the fashion industry, can appear at the beginning of a year, and by the second quarter, they can already be yesterday’s news. And they usually are. But that’s what happens in the fashion world. When it comes to industries like healthcare, biotech, financial services, and a few others, trends can be identified in time. They are usually analyzed well in advance, and the predictions tend to be spot on if the right people are handling the data.

2019 is a very promising year for IT trends, and here are some that should be included in your company’s budget:

 

Digital Transformation and Cloud

We cannot talk about a company undergoing a digital transformation process without cloud platforms. These two services come hand in hand, and they can bring any company plenty of benefits when it comes to being more productive, more efficient and more cost-effective.

As part of your business’ digital transformation process, switching over to cloud will allow your company to be more agile when it comes to handling data, messaging, and business portfolios from anywhere in the world you, your employees, or clients may be.

Cloud-based infrastructure is essential to bringing your company into the world of the future, and it’s vital in delivering flexible and on-demand access to resources worldwide, to both your employees and clients.

Want to learn more about IT trends to look out for in 2019? Sign up to watch our webinar to hear from our Founder Sean Ferrel and Solutions Architect Richard Swaisgood on what you can expect in 2019.

 

Machine Learning, AI and Automation

The age of automation is upon us, and some companies, like Google, Apple and Tesla are at the forefront of this new industrial revolution. With driverless cars and self-serving supermarkets, automation is only around the corner as a large scale phenomenon.

Machine learning and AI (artificial intelligence) are necessary fields at the forefront of developing the new way companies will work in the future. Most businesses will undergo complex automation processes to become more productive, and this will be done mainly through machine learning and AI.

Although this will mean that plenty of people will lose their jobs, it also means that it will create value in other areas of our day to day lives. Automation is not only a trend for 2019; it will become a day to day thing from now on.

While most people are familiar with the idea of AI (artificial intelligence) from sci-fi movies, not everyone is acquainted with the role machine learning plays as part of AI. Machine learning is a field of AI that interprets and uses statistics to help computers better understand behaviors, thus allowing them to learn and replicate.

Machine learning will lead to the improvement of daily processes which take place in any company, small, medium or big, because it helps cut costs exponentially and it eliminates the random factor out of many equations, leaving less (close to zero) room for errors.

 

Preparing for the California Consumer Privacy Act

The EU has already gone through the process of the GDPR (Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation), as of August 2018, and around a third of companies could not continue their activities in the European Union without making severe changes.

The same will happen with most companies in the US after the California Consumer Privacy Act comes into play. The “CCPA” will be taking effect as of January 1, 2020, so there’s still time to prepare your company to become compliant with the new set of regulations, especially when it comes to managing data.

If your company undergoes any security breaches, this could lead to severe financial losses because based on this new act, any eligible client can demand up to $750 for each violation. It means that if your company is in charge of handling private data and suffers a cyber-attack or any security breach, you are will be held accountable and have to endure the losses.

When companies work with professional data management companies, the entire responsibility will be shifted towards them, making it easier for you to focus on your core business, without the threat of losing significant amounts of money in newly-filed lawsuits based on the new CCPA act.

 

Managed Solution Authorized to Resell Microsoft Office 365 Government Community Cloud and Azure Government

San Diego, CA, August 16, 2018, – Microsoft has authorized Managed Solution to resell Microsoft Office 365 Government Community Cloud to US government organizations. Furthermore, Managed Solution has been priorly authorized to resale Government Azure Cloud, which enables it to fully serve US Federal, state, and local government agencies in their governmental capacities by providing full service cloud offerings. 

 

Office 365 Government Community Cloud is designed for the unique needs of US government organizations. This solution provides all the features and capabilities of Office 365 services in a segmented cloud environment that helps organizations meet US compliance and security standards.

Azure Government delivers a dedicated US based cloud enabling government agencies and their partners to transform mission-critical workloads to the cloud. Azure Government services handle data that is subject to certain government regulations and requirements. In order to ensure the highest level of security and compliance, Azure Government uses physically isolated data centers and networks, located in the US only.

Jennell Mott, VP of Cloud & Vendor Operations, Managed Solution: “ Being authorized as a re-seller for Microsoft Office 365 Government Community Cloud and Azure Government means that we are able to provide full service cloud solutions and offerings for our Government customers with the backing of Microsoft’s full compliance regulations.”

 

About Managed Solution

As a relationship-driven organization, Managed Solution collaborates with you to customize the perfect mix of software, hardware, and IT services. We deliver a flexible technology solution that evolves and adapts to meet your needs and exceed your expectations at every stage of your business cycle.