Outsource your IT operations

An IT operations team usually consists of IT operations manager and a cross-functional team of systems engineers, network engineers, security professionals, database engineers, and other engineers that work together to manage and maintain the IT infrastructure in a full manner of DevOps practites and utilizing DevOps tools. Common definition identifies 6 IT operations tasks:

• Run Solutions - IT team is responsible for performing deployments, regular data back-ups, restoring after a service outage or update, configuring and tuning servers and all services that are run by company in order to optimize performance. Here is crucial expert knowledge of Linux / Windows server and services, networking and databases.
• Manage Infrastructure - IT infrastructure consist of many types of hardware appliances (servers, network devices, storage, power supply etc) run and controlled by a software. Can be on-premises or in the cloud. Key prinicipal is using Infrastructure As A Code (IAAS) to manage infrastructure, and avoid manual deployments.
• Manage Configurations - IT operations must generate a number of documents regarding hardware configurations, solutions and solution dependencies, external services etc used in a company.
• Evolve Infrastructure - IT operations plays a dominant role in day-to-day maintenance, but IT operators can and must act as innovators who work to evolve the infrastructure in a way that meets the demands of the business. This includes activities such as identifying impacts of change, applying software patches and introducing new hardware and software applications to drive service performance.
• Mitigate Disasters - Disciplined organizations will plan for operational disasters. Potential disasters include servers going down, network connectivity going down, power outages, failed solution deployments, failed infrastructure deployments, natural disasters such as fires and floods, terrorist attacks, and many more. Furthermore, it is one thing to have disaster mitigations plans in place, it is another to know whether they actually work. Disciplined organizations will run through disaster scenarios to verify how well their mitigation strategies work in practice. This can be done on a scheduled basis at first, evolving into unscheduled or “random” problems (via something like ChaosMonkey) and eventually even full-fledged disaster scenarios.
• Govern IT Operations - IT Operations monitors and measures the performance of the IT infrastructure, including the IT organization's security posture. It may also develop operational metrics to help evaluate the performance of key processes and services, manage software license compliance and conduct infrastructure audits to verify that security and performance targets are being met. By outsourcing all or part of your IT operations you can focus on your business processes, reduce costs and expenses, and yet be in control and have very fast implementation and deployment of IT services.

By outsourcing all or part of your IT operations you can focus on your business processes, reduce costs and expenses, and yet be in control and have very fast implementation and deployment of IT services.

If you outsource your IT services to a service provider you can count on reducing or solving some issues:

• Cost optimization. Staff acquisition is pricey. For a small and mid-sized business with a very small network, it is unnecessary to have your own staff, it is simple overspending.
• You don't have to train your own IT staff.
• Quality improvement. Service providers can provide staff that are highly skilled and trained, plus service providers usually have employees of a wide range of professions, which leads to a conclusion that service provider can solve more issues than your own staff would be able to, in a much shorter time with higher quality.
• You can easily scale up or down your operations.
• You will accelerate the adoption of new technologies.
• Outsourcing is a win-win for both sides, small business owners and service providers.

We have 20+ years of experience in deploying and maintaining various servers and services to on-premise infrastructure or cloud. Our team owns an extensive range of IT operational skills and can support your IT operations with Linux and Windows servers,  migration to Amazon AWS, Hetzner or any other cloud provider, and operation in the cloud by fully utilise of DevOps principles. By using the AWS CDK or Terraform IAAS tool we can manage very fast any kind of deployments, whether it is migration to cloud or existing cloud operations...

We strongly suggest that any company should adopt cloud first strategy and approach in deploying its own infrastructure. Yes, on premises infrastructure has some of its own advantages. And yes, you can't even replace on premises network infrastructure. But cloud infrastructure simply has all that any company would need. With cloud, you pay only what you use and when you use it, no upfront buying expensive servers and appliances, no physical maintenance.

Here are some key differences:

• On premise: Project startup is expensive because you have to buy servers for maximum load, appliances and licenses, you even have to purchase a server weeks/months in front. You can't control your costs since there is little scalability. If your application runs in a peek 8 hours a day, and rest of a day is almost idle, you have to buy server that covers this peek.
• Cloud: Project startup is cheap, you can rent only a few resources, and scale it out in a future as project grows. In development and test stage you can turn off infrastructure in non-working hours. Cost control is higher since there is scalability for resource usage. If your application runs in a peek for 8 hours a day, and almost idle for rest of a day, by scaling infrastructure by load you can save a lot of money. Simply run as much resources as needed by load, every major cloud provider supports autoscaling resources.
• On premise: You must provide in house physical data center maintenance (physical security, electrical power, UPS devices, cooling, etc).
• Cloud: Cloud provider takes care of maintenance.
• On premise: If your project fails, you have to find another purpose for servers.
• Cloud: If you terminate project, you just terminate cloud infrastructure.
• On premise: It is harder to outsource IT services, you probably have to find local service provider, since they have to visit DC from time to time.
• Cloud: You can find service provider worldwide.
• On premise: If you need any 3rd party service to support your project, you have to purchase license, install it, maintain etc.
• Cloud: Cloud providers, Amazon AWS especially, already have available hundreds of services which can be used on a click: databases, load balances, various storages, queueing systems, machine learning, AI, analyses, etc. and your developers can easy align on it.
• Cloud provides higher level of security for your application.