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Exploring Different Types of Cloud Computing Environments & Their Benefits
Cloud Computing, Cloud Migration, Digital Transformation, Hosted Virtual Desktops, Managed Cloud Services, Technology, Uncategorized, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

You read about how cloud computing revolutionizes businesses’ operations everywhere you look. As overused as the expression might be, it happens to be true. Moving to the cloud does revolutionize how you do things. It also opens your business to more and more possibilities as your cloud strategy matures.

A January 6, 2023 Harvard Business Review (HBR) article, points out that: “Last year, many CEOs changed their outlook on cloud computing, essentially going from I’ll do it because that’ what my CIO recommends’ to ‘I want to be all in.’ Companies should focus on building out strong cloud foundations that allow them to take advantage of the most important benefits that cloud provides.” 

That’s why Gartner predicts public cloud spending to reach $600 billion this year. 

But is a public cloud environment the best way to go for your company?

What is cloud computing? It’s important to remember that not all cloud computing is created equal. In this article, we will explore the different types of cloud computing environments and their benefits to help businesses determine which one best suits their needs, but first, let’s review.

 

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing delivers computing services, including servers, storage, databases, software, and other resources over the internet. Instead of owning and maintaining physical hardware and software, users can access these resources remotely through a network of servers.

One of the most significant advantages of the cloud is that it allows small businesses to leverage the latest computing technology at a much lower cost. Cloud computing enables users to access services on-demand, scale up or down as needed, and pay only for what they use without costly hardware and maintenance. Cloud computing has become an increasingly popular technology among businesses of all sizes thanks to its flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. However, not all cloud computing is created equal. There are different types of cloud environments. Exploring the different types of cloud computing and their benefits will help you determine which one is best suited to your business needs.

On-Demand Computing

The cloud is a collection of web-connected servers and software that can be accessed and used over the internet. This means that you don’t need to host or manage your own hardware and software. Furthermore, you can access these systems from anywhere with internet access. Cloud computing is all around us, from checking our Gmail inbox to watching our favorite shows on Netflix. The emails, video files, and other information we access are located on a server somewhere in the world. Still, we can access them quickly, easily, and inexpensively thanks to modern cloud computing technology.

 

Public, Private, and Hybrid Cloud

The type of cloud you should deploy for your business depends on several factors, such as the purpose of your cloud environment, regulations governing data storage and transmission, and other considerations. There are three primary deployment models for the cloud: public, private, and hybrid. All three models provide users with any time, anywhere access to files and applications that drive their businesses, but they do so in different ways.

Public Cloud

The public cloud is a service offered by third-party providers that use shared infrastructure to provide services such as storage, applications, and computing power. Public clouds are the most cost-effective and flexible option for businesses that require scalable solutions, as they are charged on a pay-per-use basis. Additionally, public clouds offer ease of use, as there is no need for maintenance or upkeep of the infrastructure, and updates are automatically applied.

Private Cloud

A private cloud is an infrastructure owned and operated by a single company or organization. Private clouds provide more control and security over data, as they are not shared with other users. Private clouds are often used by businesses that require a higher level of protection, such as financial institutions or government agencies.

Hybrid Cloud

Hybrid clouds allow businesses to store sensitive data in a private cloud while taking advantage of the cost-effectiveness and scalability of public clouds for less-sensitive data. A hybrid cloud combines elements of both public and private clouds, allowing businesses to take advantage of both benefits. This model is ideal for companies that require scalability and flexibility but also need to maintain high security and control over their data.

 

Which type of Cloud is Best for Your Company?

Now that we’ve explored different cloud infrastructures and their unique features, it’s crucial to determine which type of cloud is the best fit for your business. Each business has special needs and considerations, such as budget, security, compliance requirements, and resource constraints.

Take time to evaluate your business needs and choose the type of cloud infrastructure that best aligns with your mid and long-term goals and objectives. Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, selecting the correct type of cloud can save you many headaches and sleepless nights. The right cloud helps you streamline your operations, boost efficiency, and stay competitive in an ever-changing business landscape.

 

Small to Mid-Sized Businesses (SME)

A public cloud is typically the most suitable cloud computing environment for small to mid-sized businesses. Huge third-party cloud service providers operate public clouds and offer services to multiple organizations or individuals over the internet. It resembles an apartment building owner renting out rooms to individual tenants.

Public clouds are cost-effective, as they operate on a pay-as-you-go basis, with no upfront costs or long-term commitments. They are also scalable, meaning businesses can quickly expand their computing resources as their needs grow.

Public clouds also offer a range of services, including infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS), allowing businesses to choose. For example, with these three different types of service, a PaaS solution provides a platform for developers to build, test, and deploy applications without having to worry about underlying infrastructure.

Whereas IaaS provides users with virtualized computing resources such as virtual desktop, storage, and networking, allowing them to build and manage their software applications and systems.

SaaS delivers ready-to-use software apps over the internet. Users don’t have to install and maintain their apps. They just log on and begin working.

Limitations of Public Cloud Computing for Small to Mid-Sized Businesses

Public cloud providers usually have a wide range of security measures to protect against cyber-attacks, which is critical for businesses that must keep their data and systems secure.

Overall, a public cloud can be attractive for small to mid-sized businesses. At least at first glance. But once you look under the hood, there may be a few things to give you pause. For one thing, there is little room for you to control your environment. There is little wiggle room for customizing any aspect of the infrastructure to meet specific needs.

For another, if you expect a speedy resolution to problems, you’ll probably be disappointed. Support and troubleshooting problems can become disruptive if they take a long time to resolve. When submitting trouble tickets to public cloud providers, the response time and support quality vary widely, making it difficult to predict how quickly they can help you resolve issues.

A third and final consideration has to do with compliance. SMEs must often comply with strict regulatory standards, particularly if they work with government contracts. Meeting HIPAA or NIST requirements can be challenging in a public cloud environment.

 

Large & Enterprise Level Companies 

The most suitable cloud computing environment for large and enterprise-level companies is typically a private or hybrid cloud. Single organizations operate private clouds. These cloud service providers host on-premises or in a data center owned and operated by a third-party provider. In the case of IronOrbit, we own and control our data centers.

Private clouds offer greater control over computing resources, allowing organizations to customize their environment to meet their needs. Private cloud providers also can provide better cybersecurity and privacy layers, keeping data within the organization’s system. Hybrid clouds combine public and private cloud environments, allowing organizations to take advantage of the best of both worlds. For example, a private cloud can keep more sensitive data. The public cloud can be the place to store less sensitive data. Hybrid clouds provide the flexibility to scale up or down as needed and offer cost savings by utilizing public cloud resources for non-sensitive data.

Large and enterprise-level companies typically have complex computing needs that require significant resources and high levels of customization. Private and hybrid clouds offer the flexibility, control, and security to meet these needs. However, it is essential to note that private and hybrid clouds require significant infrastructure, expertise, and maintenance investments. Organizations must also have robust security measures to protect against cyber attacks.

Overall, private and hybrid clouds are the most suitable cloud computing environments for large and enterprise-level companies requiring high-level customization, control, and security. 

No matter what type of cloud infrastructure a business chooses, moving to the cloud presents an opportunity to reimagine how they do business and the value they bring to their customers. Cloud technology enables firms to be more agile, flexible, and responsive to changing market demands. By leveraging the scalability and flexibility of the cloud, businesses can streamline their operations, improve their customer service, and gain a competitive advantage.

With the cloud, businesses can access new technologies and tools that were once out of reach, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data analytics. This can help businesses better understand their customers, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions. Ultimately, the cloud helps business leaders change their perspective. Some may even have a paradigm shift that dramatically impacts long-term vision and direction.

In a March 10, 2021 article for the Harvard Business Review, Bhaskar Ghosh and Karthik Narain present two clear examples of how moving to the cloud began a paradigm shift in business strategy.

They wrote that Japan’s largest pharmaceutical company, Takeda uses “edge” technology to help hemophiliacs monitor their enzymes at home. Edge
computing complements cloud computing by enabling data processing and analysis closer to the data source, dramatically reducing latency. This level of real-time mission-critical application would not be possible without cloud technology.

The article also introduces us to ENGIE, a French energy company that uses cloud technology to transform itself into a renewable and low-carbon energy provider across 70 countries. By creating a single, unified view of each customer using a PaaS tool, ENGIE can make customer insights accessible across all 24 business units. Here’s a case where a cloud computing platform enables ENGIE to quickly deliver tailor-made solutions for customers, such as its partnership with the University of Iowa to help the school become coal-free by 2025.

 

“Cloud is too important to a business’s fundamental competitiveness to be treated as an IT program. It’s about creating a platform for the efficiency, innovation, and growth that will determine the future success of your business.”
Bhaskar Ghosh and Karthik Narain,
What CEOs Need to Know About the Cloud in 2021

 

 

Conclusion

Understanding the different types of cloud and their benefits can help you determine which cloud deployment model is best suited for your business. Whether you choose public, private, or hybrid cloud, cloud computing can help your business reduce IT headaches, boost productivity, and enhance security, all while leveraging the latest computing technology at a lower cost because you’re not having to re-outfit your IT infrastructure.

But the bottom line is cloud computing, not matter which type of environment you start with, will make all the difference in the sustainability of your company. Companies should develop cloud-first strategies and look towards building cloud economic capabilities, called FinOps. The longer companies delay, the more opportunity they waste to generate value. As the HBR article mentions, “FinOps capabilities can monitor and track spend, determine the unit economics for various cloud usage scenarios, and translate the business’ consumption needs into optimal cloud offerings and pricing arrangements.”

Moving to the cloud is a gateway opportunity for businesses to continually build on technology and nurture the possibilities of creating new digital value propositions for their customers. Beyond the surface-level benefits of increases in scalability and agility, cloud computing provides free-flowing access to new technologies, tools, and resources that help companies innovate and differentiate themselves in their respective markets, which is essential for staying ahead and driving growth. In this way, cloud migration is a foundational step to digital transformation.

 

 

 

 

 

How Moving to the Cloud Provides a Gateway Opportunity to Growth
Cloud Computing, Cloud Migration, Digital Transformation, Managed Cloud Services, Technology, Uncategorized, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Work From Home

Cloud computing allows for easy collaboration and the sharing of data and resources among team members, clients, and vendors. That’s why overall growth in cloud spending continues to be strong. But collaboration and sharing merely scratch the surface of what cloud computing offers. The cloud democratizes computing technology. Cloud computing helps organizations reduce IT headaches, boosts productivity and strengthens security. Small and mid-sized businesses can give enterprise companies a run for their money.

Moving all or part of your IT infrastructure to the cloud enables companies to benefit from new technologies in various ways. Here are examples of some of them:

Scalability: with cloud computing, companies can quickly scale their computing resources up or down as needed. Increased scalability allows you to quickly and easily take advantage of new technologies without investing in expensive hardware.

Flexibility: use cloud services to run applications and store, or process large amounts of data. Test and experiment with technologies and see how they work in your environment.

Cost-Effectiveness: cloud computing can be more cost-effective than traditional on-premises solutions because you’re not making significant upfront investments in hardware. Pay for only the resources you need.

Speed: set up, configure and start using new workstations in minutes. Speed helps companies prototype new ideas, test new technologies, and get the latest products and services to market more quickly.

Access to Leading-Edge Technologies: many cloud providers offer access to cutting-edge technologies, such as AI, machine learning, and big data analytics, as part of their services. Companies can test out technologies without building and maintaining the infrastructure themselves.

Data Security and Compliance: Companies can leverage IronOrbit’s security and compliance features to keep data secure and comply with regulations.

Company-maintained data centers require personnel and hardware. They’re expensive to set up, operate, and maintain. IronOrbit helps you reduce your physical IT footprint and eliminates the tedious, intensive work of managing servers and data centers. Moving to the cloud eliminates costly IT infrastructure. Less infrastructure means your IT staff is not spending time patching servers, updating software, or doing tedious maintenance. Instead, they can work more strategically with stakeholders on high-value business objectives.

IronOrbit’s pay-as-you-go model provides tremendous agility to your business. You can now deploy technology solutions that were once too expensive or complicated to handle. With IronOrbit, you can scale your environment based on your need without paying extra for what you don’t need. Since IronOrbit builds and maintains its environment, we can offer you a cloud solution that makes the most sense for your situation. The IronOrbit cloud provides the kind of control you’d expect from having on-premises servers. Only your environment is safer, more robust, and more resilient in our cloud environment.

For example, let’s say you operate an accounting firm. When tax season rolls around, traffic to your website surges dramatically. Suddenly, you need equipment that can handle the traffic increases. That means you’re paying extra for the power you’ll need for a fraction of the time. The resources to support the site automatically kick in to accommodate the surge if you’re on the cloud. Companies that are quick in adopting cloud computing will have the upper hand in innovation and scaling their business. Those companies that don’t move at least some of their resources to the cloud may have difficulty keeping up and staying competitive.

In Conclusion
Moving to the cloud provides companies of all sizes with a gateway opportunity for growth. Scalability, flexibility, and the speed of cloud computing mobilize companies to create new growth engines and business models. Cloud computing can also enable companies to improve their data security, comply with regulations, and collaborate more effectively with partners and customers. Accessing cutting-edge technologies and services gives companies a competitive edge in the market.

While there are some trade-offs and challenges to consider, the benefits of cloud computing greatly outweigh the costs and risks, providing a solid foundation for growth and success. So, companies should consider moving to the cloud as a part of their long-term growth strategy. Stay competitive and adapt to the ever-changing technology landscape. Contact us for a no-obligation consultation. Start your journey today.

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How Digital Technology Helps Deal with Climate Change
5G, AEC, Business Strategy, Cloud Computing, Cloud Migration, Desktop as a Service, Digital Transformation, Disaster Recovery, Future-Proofing, IT Services, Managed Cloud Services, Managed Server Hosting, Managed Services, Manufacturing, Scaling Up, Services, Services>Business, Technology, Travel, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Web Hosting, Work From Home

Digitization and climate change are both hot topics. The two subjects are also getting used together in the same sentence more frequently. For example, did you know digitization is good for reducing carbon emissions? According to the World Economic Forum, Digital technologies have the potential to reduce global emissions by 15%.

Since the pandemic lockdown, people have been working from home. The workforce has been slow in returning to the corporate office setting. An IFS survey conducted last year reports that almost three-quarters of respondents plan to increase spending on digital transformation. The climate control benefits include a reduction of CO2 emissions due to less commuting and travel to in-person meetings. Technologies like Microsoft Teams have made multi-site team meetings easy and readily available.

Cloud migration is the price of admission to competing in the digital world. 

Moving your IT environment to the cloud reduces the need for additional hardware, but more importantly, to your bottom line and the environment, cloud migration modernizes your operations. While being on the cloud, and using robust cloud-enabled services like IronOrbit’s INFINITY Workspaces, won’t make your business carbon neutral, it is a significant first step on that journey.

DEMATERIALIZATION
How You Can Reduce the Environmental Impact on Doing Business

Hardware casings, cords, adaptors, and other electrical products are called E-waste. E-waste is a growing problem. Significant environmental damage happens because nature cannot absorb these products. E-Waste is a significant contributor to the haphazard disposal of old electronics: they’re inert. All E-Waste products contain hazardous materials of one kind or another. The toxic materials are predominantly lead and mercury.

By switching to IronOrbit’s cloud, you can reduce the amount of hardware because you no longer need to invest in so many on-site computer stations. There’s no need to pay for its maintenance or replace machinery when it becomes obsolete. Instead, you only pay for the exact services you need. Over time, this saves you money. Cloud computing can help your company become sustainable while making it more profitable and productive.

Reducing Needless Travel Reduces Carbon Emissions

INFINITY Workspaces is our brand of DaaS, robust technology that enables employees to work remotely with ease. There are different INFINITY packages to fit specific use cases. Even designers and engineers can access the most demanding modern applications on their mobile devices. INFINITY Workspaces empowers Geographically dispersed teams to do their best work. The technology inspires productivity while eliminating the need for lengthy commutes. It also eliminates the carbon emissions associated with daily commutes.

Adopting a work-from-home environment or even a hybrid workplace is an excellent way to reduce your business’s carbon footprint. You could also save some money in the process.

Shared Data Centers Reduce Greenhouse Gases (GHGs)

On-premises servers and data centers use substantial amounts of energy both for running and cooling. The manufacturing, packaging, and shipping of the hardware and peripheral products also add to GHG emissions. Companies can reduce emissions considerably by moving to a cloud computing environment. Once a company moves to the cloud, they use shared data centers. Like the ones operated by IronOrbit, shared data centers run far more efficiently than individual facilities or on-premises servers. There is no longer a need for personal equipment.

A recent forecast by the International Data Corporation (IDC) reports that cloud computing will prevent the emission of more than one billion metric tons of CO2 between 2021 and 2024. Moving away from legacy software and hardware and towards cloud adoption is a logical next step for companies. Insofar as business continuity and investment in the future, cloud migration is a necessity.

Cloud computing and all the digital benefits of having your IT infrastructure on the cloud are valuable for IT departments. IT departments can work more closely with business leaders to develop new sustainability goals. It is favorable for companies, and of course, it contributes to a healthier environment.

Contact us for a no-obligation proof of concept. We’re here to help.

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The Smart Play of Smart Managed Services

At a recent design and manufacturing conference, a question came up. “Is the industry ready to make use of new technologies?” The answer came back, a resounding no. Most companies have skipped the step of digitizing their existing processes, so they’re not ready for new digital inputs. Perhaps an excellent intermediary step would be to reimagine business as usual by partnering with a managed service provider (MSP).

Shifting to a managed services environment is a critical step for many businesses. If you’re feeling overwhelmed with wondering about your next best business decision, then you’re not alone.

Many companies haven’t figured out how to change themselves enough to grapple with legacy challenges, let alone how to solve new, more complex puzzles like digitizing operations. By having an MSP like IronOrbit, companies can take their time becoming more comfortable with the idea of digitizing. When companies are ready to digitize, they won’t need to do major surgery on their IT infrastructure or data architecture before they begin. Instead, they’ll have a reliable partner who can focus on providing the right technology at the right time.

The Growing Skills Gap

In January 2021, a McKinsey study found that  87% of companies worldwide are aware of a skills gap. Gaps in IT departments will become increasingly conspicuous as emerging technologies continue to get a foothold. In the digital age, companies need to move fast. Ongoing IT education is prohibitive for many organizations. Even if the financial resources are available, the process is too slow. There is a genuine need for businesses to move faster than before. Whatever they can do to enable their operations to be more transformative and innovative with their use of technology, the better off they’ll be for whatever happens next.

As soon as an IT, enterprise resource planning (ERP), or e-commerce business solution is down; an organization instantly loses profits. Efficiency and expertise are necessary for getting these solutions back up and running. Bracing for the storm of increasing demand and decreasing labor power, business leaders may feel stuck when making their next move. If this is the case, managed services could be a solution. Here are the factors to consider.

Bridge the Skills Gap

A recent Prudential survey reports that businesses that focus on continuously expanding employee skills have a tremendous advantage over those companies that don’t. When critical business technology goes down, companies can’t wait for internal IT teams to figure it out. Having a managed services partner like IronOrbit can efficiently solve the issue; moreover, a predictive analysis might prevent such disruptions in the first place.

Your Perfect IT Partner: Five Things

When considering a managed services partner to fit your business, there are five key characteristics to consider:

  1. Cost Savings – With IronOrbit’s managed services expertise and ability to efficiently solve IT challenges, you’ll notice significant cost savings by filling the skills gap and preventing extended downtime, lag issues, and recurring IT problems.
  2. An Increase in Productivity & Efficiency – Supporting your business and employees is IronOrbit’s reason for being. IronOrbit’s Managed Services free your internal IT, so they can focus on other priorities and increase your business’s efficiency.
  3. Quick Response Times – IronOrbit’s support staff is available when you need them so you can increase efficiency. IOCentral’s self-help automation tools make it fast and easy to open support tickets and check status around the clock, three hundred and twenty-five days a year. IronOrbit guarantees a consistent and reliable communication line to address urgent issues efficiently. Access to IronOrbit Resources and Specialized Expertise. IronOrbit service providers are certified professionals who have the expertise your business needs.
  4. An Extension of Your IT Department – With IronOrbit’s Managed Services, you’re not just getting a solid and secure IT infrastructure; you’re getting a partner who can liaise between your IT department and your ERP and e-commerce providers for the most effective solutions. Your team will have more time to spend on furthering business-critical activities than solving IT problems.
  5. Finding What Works for Your Business – IronOrbit has the expertise and innovative technology to best support you and your team regardless of the business needs. IronOrbit’s Smart Managed Services enables you and your teams to step away from any IT needs to focus on critical strategies for sustainable business growth. You’ll have more bandwidth to experiment and figure things out. Plus, you’ll have a technology partner ready to provide options for any challenge that may appear on the horizon. Companies face innumerable disruptive threats and risks. IronOrbit’s Smart Managed Services ensure smooth sailing for your IT environment now and in the future. We’ll be there whenever you’re ready to do more of anything, including digitize operations.

 

Please call us now at 888-753-5060 for a free no-obligation consultation.

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2022 Tech Trends to Increase Business Growth & Resilience
Cloud Computing, Cloud Migration, Digital Transformation, Technology, Uncategorized

 

2022 will continue to see the digitization and virtualization of society and business. The need for sustainability, increasing data volumes, and computer network speeds will drive digital transformation as companies move from a survival strategy to one of thriving.

As promised by Moore’s Law several decades ago, technology advancements continue to accelerate, but the speed at which these accelerations are occurring far outpaced earlier projections. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report says, “Developments in previously disjointed fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, robotics, nanotechnology, 3D printing, and genetics and biotechnology are all building on and amplifying one another. More than a third of the desired core skill sets of most occupations will be comprised of skills that at not yet considered crucial to the job today.”

When you think about what technologies might be game-changing for your company in 2022, you aren’t thinking about nanotechnology, quantum computing, or neural interfaces. As much as the tech giants may want to forecast a utopian future based on these technologies, what your company needs right now is technologies that will help you get more done with less, work from anywhere, and support your organizational objectives.

Let’s dive into some “right now” technologies that can be disruptive in a good way to your workflow and organization as a whole in 2022.

 

Digitization and Virtual Environments

The trend toward leveraging big data and the digitization of workflow within organizations makes virtual work environments possible. During the pandemic, everybody scrambled to set up home offices. The organizations that already had a virtual IT infrastructure had a much smoother transition. Employees just had to grab their computers from the office and take them home. Others had to work through it and make adjustments along the way. Most of those that didn’t transition went out of business.

It’s interesting to note that many business leaders are still grappling with the employee question of when (or if) they’ll be returning to an office environment. Sharyn Leaver writing for Forrester, predicts only 10% of companies will remain fully remote. Of the 60% planning to shift to some sort of hybrid model, one-third of those firms will fail in their first attempt at anywhere work.

New technologies are emerging in every area. Cloud computing continues to be at the forefront of every discussion because it is foundational to everything else. All IT services, applications, and cybersecurity protocols are delivered through the cloud.

Last October, at Gartner’s IT Symposium in Stamford, Connecticut, analysts reported that enterprises must move away from “lift and shift” migration and toward Cloud-Native Platforms (CNPs). The power of cloud computing provides scalable and elastic IT-related capabilities “as a service” to technology creators using internet technologies, delivering fast time to value and reduced costs.  For this reason, Gartner predicts CNPs will serve as the foundation for more than 85% of new digital initiatives by 2025, up from less than 40% in 2021.

 

Aamer Baig writes in an article for McKinsey, “Most companies we know are well into their cloud journeys and understand notionally that the cloud offers a big opportunity. But many are struggling to capture the full value cloud offers. As in the adoption of any new technology, of course, hiccups are inevitable. But the fundamental issue is that companies are looking at the cloud as a source of IT productivity improvements rather than as a source of transformative value—which is more than $1 trillion, by our calculations.

Improvements in productivity and efficiency gains through cloud-migration programs can generate significant cost savings, but they essentially represent better ways of doing what IT already does. CIOs have a crucial role in getting the business to focus on the far bigger prize: the new businesses, innovative practices, and new sources of revenue that cloud either enables or accelerates.

One pharma company built its GxP-compliant IT environment on the cloud and uses an ecosystem of cloud services that connect with manufacturing instruments, robotics, and other systems. It has been using a combination of scaling, instance management, storage, workload processing, and data-warehousing services to accelerate vaccine development.

A large agriculture company put into the cloud the vast amounts of data it had accumulated on improving equipment maintenance and used advanced analytics to generate insights that became the basis for a new business offering to growers.

CIOs need to master cloud economics and target business areas that can benefit from the cloud’s advantages of speed, flexibility, and scale. As importantly, they need to consider how to make the large-scale changes to IT’s operating model that are needed to build the capabilities to generate new value. Fewer than 10 percent of technology leaders, however, say they are most focused on hiring cloud talent, placing it at the bottom of hiring priorities. That’s a red flag, especially considering that almost 50 percent of CIOs plan to migrate more than three-quarters of all workloads to the cloud in the next two years.”

 

The term artificial intelligence was coined by Dartmouth math professor John McCarthy in 1955.

 

AI will continue to improve and become ubiquitous in the year 2022. Even the most rudimentary of businesses are utilizing AI devices connected to nearly everything and using AI in:

  • Voice Assistants
  • Smart TVs
  • Smart Whiteboards
  • Language Translation
  • Mobile Devices
  • Robotic Process Automation

Companies using AI devices accumulate tremendous amounts of customer data. This well of information just then needs to be categorized and analyzed for pro-growth decisions based on real-time data. 2022 will see a dramatic jump in the utilization of AI due to the higher speeds available through the widespread adoption of the 5G network.

Before rushing out to buy the latest and greatest in AI technology, it’s a good idea to do some research or delegate an IT innovation team to do some preliminary homework. Become familiar with the capabilities of the technology and ensure it aligns with the mid-range and long-term strategy of your organization.

In a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article first published in 2018, Thomas Davenport and Rajeev Ronanki wrote about the importance of understanding which technologies perform what types of tasks, and the strengths and limitations of each. They write, “we encountered several organizations that wasted time and money pursuing the wrong technology for the job at hand.”

Since many organizations, even large enterprise companies, can lack the necessary in-house expertise to evaluate new and emerging technologies, it’s necessary for business leaders to work closely with IT to identify the right consultants to advise on high-priority projects.

Davenpot and Ronanki found that nearly a majority of cognitive technology projects had to do with robotics and automation. Business leaders have two schools of thought when it comes to automation. Some see automation as a way to eliminate full-time employees while others see it as a way to automate menial tasks in order to make better use of its people.  Amazon for instance has been looking at ways for its people to devote more time to building new products. The Hands Off the Wheel program began in the retail management division to develop ways for machine learning to handle repetitive mundane work such as keeping its gigantic warehouses stocked with products to sell.

When companies make it clear that they are using AI to help people rather than replace them, they significantly outperform companies that don’t set that objective (HBR).

Alex Kantrowitz, author of ALWAYS DAY ONE: HOW THE TECH TITANS PLAN TO STAY ON TOP FOREVER (Portfolio, 2020), writes in an article for Harvard Business Review, that Amazon’s transition to Hands Off the Wheel took years to roll out and a great deal of training. “The retail-division employees were despondent at first, recognizing that their jobs were transforming. Yet in time, many saw the logic. ‘When we heard that ordering was going to be automated by algorithms, its like, ‘OK, what’s happening to my job?’”

According to Kantrowitz, Amazon didn’t implement this program to reduce headcount but rather free up personnel to invent and oversee new product development.  Kantrowitz makes an essential point: “Had Amazon eliminated those jobs, it would have made its flagship business more profitable but would have missed the next new business opportunity.

Amazon has about 350,000 mobile drive unit robots working alongside hundreds of thousands of humans employed at fulfillment centers.

 

Entrepreneurship and seizing opportunities through leverage are at the heart of Amazon’s raison d’être. At no other time in history has it been as easy, fast, and inexpensive to start a new business. Amazon’s view is that it is a facilitator of entrepreneurship, providing the investment, platform, and resources to help build new businesses.

Amazon first opened its online shelves to small businesses in 2000. In 2018, the company created an internal Small Business Empowerment team. In a press announcement, CEO Dave Clark said, “We made the decision to open our store’s virtual shelves to third-party sellers. At the time, big-box retailers had been pushing small businesses out of the retail market. We bet that bringing selling partners into our store would not only be a win for customers who want vast product selection, low prices, and fast delivery, but it would also be a win for small businesses wanting to reach more customers, increase revenue and profits, and create good jobs.”

The number of US sellers who surpassed $1 million in sales grew another 15%. Kantrowitz concludes, “If Amazon is any indication, businesses that reassign employees after automating their work will thrive.”

A recent Forrester study shows that technology leaders will focus on human-centered technology transformations. Indicating that less than 15% of firms nominated digital transformation as a priority in 2022, the report suggests leading firms will use emerging technology to unlock the creativity of their employees and drive innovation that focuses on outcomes, not just financial results.

Subscription-Based Technologies

The trend of “______ as a Service” technologies has exploded in the past few years. 2022 will see more of this trend – for several good reasons.

Subscription-based business technologies:

  • don’t force you to buy more than you are using
  • are cost-effective
  • are easily scalable up or down
  • are flexible to match market fluctuations
  • can be deployed easily and quickly

Maybe the best part about subscription-based technologies is the zero-coding needed to utilize them. You don’t have to have an in-house IT team. These technologies come pre-built and can integrate easily with other technologies in use within your business. In addition, because the technologies are virtual (in a cloud environment), your business has less exposure to cyber risk and a higher level of business continuity readiness.

Compliance Technologies

The more data that a company creates and gathers from the public, the greater their social responsibility becomes for the protection and use of that data. Whether your company needs to have transparency, governance, and accountability regarding data to protect your brand or you have legislative and industry-standard compliance mandates to adhere to, the technologies revolving around compliance are here to stay and will be growing throughout 2022. These new compliance technologies will help streamline your compliance efforts, minimizing the effort and money expended on compliance concerns.

 

Employee Wellness and Retention Technologies

The pandemic has brought a wave of resignations and shuffling of employees from one company to another. Business leaders are looking to technology to make employment at their organization more attractive to prospective – and current – employees. This desire to improve working conditions for employee retention has resulted in the utilization of many technologies. These advancements range from wearables that help employees monitor wellness for a work/life balance to new features built into ergonomic forms that reduce stress and improve employees’ workday in repetitive motion tasks.

Other considerations regarding employee wellness and retention technologies are tech that improves communication and collaboration on tasks and incorporates that “water cooler” chat function lost in the social distancing and work-from-home exodus of 2020.

By using tech to reincorporate that human connection into the virtual workplace, companies are helping to give their employees more of a sense of camaraderie and belonging – rather than isolation.

 

In Conclusion:

Your business, like many others, is reliant upon technology to maintain your competitive edge. It’s important to know what technologies other companies are leveraging – both within your industry and the broader marketplace. But knowing that other companies are having success with or planning on implementing game-changing tech within their organizations isn’t enough. Companies that take decisive action will face the fast-paced challenges of the next few years much better than those that are more cautious. Combine strategic planning with bold decision-making as you prioritize your technology objectives for the next 12 months. You must have a trusted IT partner to vet those technologies and advise you about their potential ROI within your particular business.

2022 is shaping up to be a year of both promise and uncertainty, but one thing is sure: companies that build a platform to embrace new tech within their workflow will have an advantage out of the starting gate.

 

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Moving to the Cloud is an Essential Strategy for 2022

While not the magic bullet that solves all your operational problems, moving to the cloud forms the foundation of building a solid technology platform.

Businesses that took the opportunity to remake and future-proof their infrastructure and workforce during the pandemic will continue to pull ahead of the competition. As we move into 2022, it becomes imperative for companies to move to the cloud to accomplish two strategies:

  • Be agile and flexibly prepared for the unexpected
  • To Take advantage of emerging AI-enabled digital technologies

These two objectives mean large-scale changes to IT’s operating model. The more technology-savvy people in the company should take the lead in understanding what moving to the cloud would mean for the company. Target specific business areas and look at how having workflows on the cloud benefits operations through increased speed, flexibility, and scale, which are the standard hallmarks of having operations in a cloud environment.

Speed, Flexibility, & Scalability

If you want to deliver digital capabilities anywhere and everywhere, consider how the IronOrbit ecosystem uses the core capabilities of cloud computing to provide scalable and elastic IT-related capabilities. Our teams of engineers and business visionaries have taken the complexity out of migrating your environment to the cloud, so you benefit from faster time to value and reduced costs.

The improvements in productivity and efficiency can generate significant cost savings over time; however, the actual benefit delivery is optimizing IT functions. You’ll be doing things you’ve always done, but you’ll be doing them better, and your operations will be much more resistant to disruptions.

Introducing IOCentral

Our new automated self-service portal, IOCentral, delivers a fast and easy way to scale storage, networks, databases, and computer functionality. An intuitive interface allows you to scale business functions more quickly by connecting essential software and microservices. Using AI-enabled technology, IOCentral enables flexibility and comprehensive ecosystem management from one pane of glass.

Speed, flexibility, scalability, and reduced costs indeed represent long-term value, but those in and of themselves do not convey the urgency for moving to the cloud. For that, we need to look further ahead.

The Bigger Business Benefit of Moving to the Cloud

Taking full advantage of your move to the cloud means looking at the new possibilities available to your business because now your business is part of the global cloud ecosystem. The cloud now becomes a catalyst to build new capabilities and value propositions for your customers.

This larger prize focuses on building innovative practices, new sources of revenue, and learning from the unique knowledge flows that will inspire leadership, not IT, to create new digital value propositions for your customers.

Without the cloud, leadership will never be able to enter the competitive arena of 2022 and beyond, let alone have the possibility to innovate new products and services.

The Cloud Delivers All IT Services, Apps, and More.

 

Be ready to use new digital technologies and stay ahead of change. Call now for a proof-of-concept of how IronOrbit can prepare your business for sustained success.

Call us today at 888-753-5060

 

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Roadblocks to Scaling Up
Scaling Up: 13 Roadblocks to Success
Cloud Computing, Cloud Migration, Desktop as a Service, Digital Transformation, Hosted Virtual Desktops, Scaling Up, Technology
Scaling up is the ability to take on increased workloads in a cost-effective manner and meet the demands of your business without suffering the negative consequences of overreaching.

Scaling up sounds like a fantastic idea. After all, who wouldn’t want to be able to handle more work, delivering more goods and services while leveraging economies of scale for greater profitability?

But the promise of scaling is often like an iceberg. What you see above the water (the work to be done) is nothing compared to the work lurking under the water. These are the challenges faced in scaling a business. Some companies get to a point where it is painful to add another client or bring on more talent. Scaling up seems like piling on more overhead for less reward. Revenue never has a chance to turn into profits.

Here are some barriers many companies may face as they ramp up their operations.

Scaling Up Too Soon

A good question to ask a good business consultant is, Is it too soon to grow the business? Any time before you have all the pieces in place and a strategy to scale is too soon. Is the market is ready to embrace and demand your products or services? Timing is everything. First, to go big into the market is sometimes a good idea, but sometimes not. Companies get eaten alive and never recover.

No Plan to Scale Up

Often the small to mid-size business fails in the efforts to scale for lack of planning. They have an objective and a vague notion of how to get there. Growth-minded companies might partner with that vendor or hire new employees.  But all too often, a structured plan is missing. Having a strategy that guides the requirements, stages, and timeline for scaling is foundational for success. As a result, the timing is off, and the company is missing pieces of the puzzle. Frustration and failure soon follow.

No Understanding of the Difference Between Growth and Scaling

For most successful companies, growth came before scaling up. Taking time to grow allows SOPs to be established and perfected. Taking the time to grow enables hiring key people and building a solid reputation. These things are critical for financial backing to scale. Growth is a time to experiment and approve or discard strategic partners and vendors. Growth helps them understand the management and IT resources required for successful scaling. Multiplying processes and output without a substantial increase in resources is the foundation of scalability. Business leaders need to know if the company is prepared to scale up.

Unnecessary or Untimely Product/Service Additions

As soon as a company begins to have a little bit of success in their efforts to scale, they often become overzealous with their efforts to take over the marketplace.

They may move away from their core business too quickly and begin advertising products and services they are not prepared to deliver. Even if they can make a dollar on those tangential goods and services, they are taking resources away from what is central to their current revenue stream and their ability to scale.

Selecting the Wrong Partners & Vendors

Companies across the planet have learned the wrong partners or vendors can put companies at risk. Long supply chains and unproven vendors can have detrimental consequences on the delivery of goods and services to your customers, as well as injure brand reputations.

Avoid vendors and strategic partners who over promise and under deliver. There is no room for freeloading. Everyone has to do their part.

 

Lack of Internal Communication

Employees need to know the company culture and what is expected. Companies need complete buy-in from their workforce to scale up successfully. There also must be a strategy communicated internally. Along with the nuts and bolts of your well-laid strategy is a minefield of employee concerns, expectations, and emotions that you must address. If employees feel left out of the loop – or worse, insecure in their jobs – they will not be best positioned to support scaling efforts. Internal communication requires more than just a company-wide meeting or a series of internal memos sent out to senior staff. Instead, the business leaders must keep their finger on the pulse of how the staff is acclimating to the proposed and in-progress changes.

 

Internal Communication and Planning
Verne Harnish’s book Scaling Up shows how to improve scalability. Scalability requires putting the right team together and then educating them on the growth strategies of the company. Articulate a clear vision for meeting future goals regularly.

Apple's founder Steve Jobs showcases Apple's latest laptop.

 

The last decision Steve Jobs made was to build Apple University.

He knew that it would be the one legacy he’d leave behind so that his organization would thrive long after he was gone.

Cutting Prices

Once you’ve been able to leverage some economies of scale, there is often a temptation to cut prices to undercut the competition and gain more market share. “After all,” you think, “We’re still making the same amount on our goods/services.” While it’s tempting to cut your prices and try to push the competition out of business, the money you will lose is better saved and utilized within your scaling efforts.

Technology That Can’t (or Can’t Easily) Scale-Up

Whether you’re working with legacy systems that keep your productivity limited, or you’re working with on-site workstations and servers that are expensive and cumbersome to scale, your technology is limiting your potential. This roadblock used to be a nearly insurmountable one for businesses trying to scale on a budget. However, with advances in cloud-based IT infrastructure and Desktop as a Service, the financial hurdle considerations are lowered due to the cloud’s ability to scale with your business expansion. Companies across the planet have factored cloud computing ability into their scaling strategy and are successfully leveraging the flexibility, mobility, and cost-effective nature of cloud workflow assets.

As an IBM fellow, Jason McGee puts it, migrating applications to the cloud can deliver significant business benefits for companies of all sizes.

Failing to Create Long-Term Demand

Business leaders that fundamentally misunderstand the role of advertising and marketing often pin their hopes of scaling on the stop-and-go stutter-step of marketing efforts. While marketing strategy should always be a part of your scaling endeavor, it is not sufficient on its own to supply continuous, qualified customers. Instead, part of any scaling strategy should be a plan to grow market demand for your products/services. After all, you want them knocking on your door for what you provide; you don’t want to be chasing work constantly with ad campaigns.

Cash Flow and Credit

There is no way around it, scaling requires sufficient cash flow. Many organizations with a fantastic plan to scale launch that endeavor, only to find that their efforts are stymied by lack of on-hand cash or credit. In a recent episode of “What’s Up AEC?!” the Immediate Past Board Chair of ACEC National, Charles Gozdziewski warns about the cash flow aspect of scaling up too quickly. “I’ve seen small firms suddenly become part of a big project. They go from 10 people to 25 people and then they go bankrupt. They just don’t have the financing or financial knowledge to handle it.”

Each stage of your scaling strategy will require more financial backing, and that backing must be available at that stage or things begin to unravel. Setting yourself up for success requires ensuring that you will have the backing you need well in advance of your step to the next level of operational expansion.

Yellow Chair amongst rows of blue chairs.
Scaling up starts and ends with individuals. Make sure you have the right people in the right seats.
Quality Employees Instead of Quantity

Scaling starts and ends with individuals. Whether you are in a service industry or manufacture goods, your employees can make or break your scaling prospects. As much as anything else, scaling requires the right beliefs and behavior. Growth-oriented companies need people who are comfortable with change, who can move fast, and take ownership of tasks. In the rush to scale, companies often hire too quickly and find that they experience internal roadblocks to productivity because of the unqualified staff they’ve hired. Unfortunately, companies that are quickly ramping up delivery of goods and services often don’t have time for extensive employee training or the flexibility for employees to learn “on the job.” A resourceful HR team should be among your first hires to help ensure that your business sources and hires employees that can step in and do the work without handholding.

Ignoring Growth Pains and Fixating on Growth Pains

Whether leadership is determined not to let that “one issue” hold things back or fixate on that “one issue” to the detriment of other things that require attention, it still lands the administration in a difficult spot. On the one hand, small issues at one stage of scaling can become mountains of pain in the next stage of expansion. On the other, a fixation with a specific issue can lead to an unhealthy overemphasis on one aspect of the business, throwing everything out of kilter.

To scale, you must be aware of growing pains and be able to handle them appropriately without devoting all your attention and resources to those problems.

Micromanagement

Organizations with micromanagers at the top very often do not do well when it comes to scaling up operations. Delegating responsibility is an essential component of scaling an enterprise. A business leader must know their self well enough to see this tendency in themselves before it becomes an issue that derails the scaling process. Sometimes, it’s necessary to step into a different leadership role and allow someone that has delegation skills to fill that administrative slot. As you scale, so should your management structure. Finding the right role for you to play and bringing in the people you need to bolster your weaknesses is a sign of a good leader.

 

In Conclusion

 

Despite significant roadblocks to developing capacities to scale up quickly, there are multiple benefits for an organization to prepare itself for the likelihood of scaling up.

The challenges of scaling up are complex because scalability isn’t just about growth. It also has to do with its ability to be flexible, agile, and versatile. The same things that position the business for expansion are the same things that prepare them for unknown shifts in the market and unforeseen events like a worldwide pandemic. Preparedness is all about becoming proactive and being strategic with digital technology.

In a Forbes article from March 1, 2021, Paolo Gallo and Giuseppe Stigliano write, “Because of the dizzying speed of change today, fueled by this umpteenth acceleration, companies can’t count on their strengths alone to innovate. The CEO of a mobility services company reminded us how crucial it is at this stage to build eco-systems, resisting the temptation to reduce them to ego-systems. We have to collaborate with third parties to build systems in which the individual parts function as a single entity, in a more or less continual way to provide high-value-added services to final customers. Companies have to see themselves as fluid platforms, capable together of providing a value proposition that is exponentially bigger than what they could offer alone.”

In one of our previous blogs, we stressed the importance of componentization as a key ingredient to offering new digital value propositions. Taking the time to componentize offerings and build a solid digital foundation for your company will also position it for agility, flexibility, and growth.

The in-depth Deloitte Insights article, Putting Digital at the Heart of Strategy, goes beyond pointing out that digital transformation enables new growth opportunities. It indicates that those companies that don’t digitize in the next five years will be doomed.

Digitizing operations, a key benefit of cloud computing, improves an organization’s ability to meet sudden increases (or decreases) in demand.

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The Cloud Ecosystem Economy
Today’s Cloud Ecosystem Economy and Why it is Important to Understand

 

Like it or not, we are living, no….thriving, in a cloud ecosystem economy and there is no turning back.

What is a Cloud Ecosystem Economy?

Just as a biological ecosystem consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact, the cloud ecosystem is a complex system of increasingly interdependent components all working together. The cloud ecosystem economy is the great catalyst that levels the playing field for all businesses. This is an explosive ecosystem that expands the reach and scope of every business that taps into it. It has also increased the power of the individual and made available vast amounts of knowledge flows. That’s one of the reasons why Rene Buest’s, article How Tech CEOs Participate in Ecosystems, describes this phenomenon as a continually evolving ecosystem that forms the basis of innovative digital solutions and products. It’s why Jeanne Ross prescribes cloud services as the foundation for all digital offerings; thereby become the bedrock for digital transformation.

It is true to say that the Cloud is just someone else’s computer. That is one way to think about it, but it’s far from presenting the whole story. What cloud technology makes possible goes considerably beyond computing capabilities. We’re talking about many kinds of immense databases and knowledge flows the cloud taps into. We’re talking about synergy and exponential growth (see Moore’s Law).

Imagine if you owned a business at the beginning of the 20th Century and hadn’t yet adopted telephone technology. How long could you have remained competitive in such an environment? While business leaders don’t need to understand the ins and outs of the technology, they must understand how the technology impacts the future of their business.

In a recent report, the data analysis company Ecosystem cites three reasons CEOs need to get involved in and have visibility into an organization’s cloud investment.

 

Chart showing the top reasons business leaders are moving their IT environment to the cloud.
A study from Ecosystem, a technology data, and analysis company, showed the main cloud benefits sought by companies considering cloud migration.
Cloud Enables Transformation

Enterprise companies have matured in their Cloud adoption. Decisions are no longer driven by the benefits of shifting Cloud from CapEx to OpEx. The top 3 Cloud benefits sought by companies are

1. Improved Service Levels & Agility 
2. Increased Work Process Efficiency
3. Flexibility & Scalability 

The idea is that the Cloud Ecosystem is a group of technologies and resources that empower infrastructure and open the doors to a world of digital value propositions not yet imagined. The Cloud Ecosystem is an enabler of doing business, real-time data access for productivity increase, and process automation. This impacts the entire organization and involves prioritizing the needs of certain functions over others. These are not decisions the CIO should make alone.

The Cloud is Not Cheap

Cloud adoption may not reduce costs. Ecosystem360 found that over a third of the organizations surveyed find the Cloud more expensive than traditional licensing or owning the hardware. As businesses use the Cloud to scale, several aspects are dynamic and require constant reassessment. In many cases, companies have found themselves having to find and recruit new teams to manage and maintain the Cloud environment. This is not an issue with IronOrbit. Because IronOrbit offers an all-inclusive solution, you don’t have the high, unexpected, added cost of third-party IT resources. Instead, you get a predictable monthly fee.

Joining the Cloud Ecosystem Gives You Access to Emerging Technologies

Tom Wujec is a fellow at AutoDesk and a global leader in 3-D design, engineering, and entertainment software. He said, “When any industry becomes computable, it goes through a series of predictable changes: It moves from being digitalized to being disrupted to being democratized.”

The Democratization of Disruptive Technologies

While it is true the technology and business world is disruptive; it is also becoming increasingly democratized. The Cloud Ecosystem is a principle conveyor of new technology adoptions. Companies have to be a part of the Cloud Ecosystem to leverage emerging technologies (democratization) or face disruptions from competitors who beat them to the Cloud. Returning to the Ecosystem article, “Cloud is no longer only required for infrastructure and back-up, but improving business processes, by enabling real-time data and systems access. Similarly, IoT devices will grow exponentially.

The Cloud Ecosystem Economy was well on its way before the recent pandemic, which only further accelerated the use of cloud-based solutions. The Ecosystem findings suggest Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) will remain the key area of focus, especially Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS).

“The gap between science-fiction and science is getting narrow now,” said Andrew Hessel, a former research scientist at AutoDesk and now co-chair of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology at Singularity University. “As soon as soon as someone has an idea and articulates it, it can be manifested in a very short period.”

The Cloud Ecosystem has left the purview of the IT department and is now part of the board room discussions. Technology is no longer just a point solution. It is a collaboration between humans and machines because, with the help of the Cloud Ecosystem, business leaders can understand the whole range of viable possibilities beyond what any human mind can comprehend on its own. It is time to take advantage of what’s possible. Be inspired by technology and what it can do to increase value to your customers.

Business leaders recognize that taking advantage of the Cloud Ecosystem Economy is about creating a platform for efficiency, innovation, and growth. In a 2021 Harvard Business Review Survey amongst CEOs, 87% said that Cloud would be a critical component to achieving sustainability goals to a moderate or significant degree. The article also reported that only 37% of C-level executives had fully achieved the outcomes they expected from their cloud initiatives. Rene Buest reports, “Only about 3 in 10 CEOs reported complete confidence in their organization’s cloud migration initiatives to deliver expected value at the expected time.

Many variables come into moving legacy systems into the Cloud. There are many pitfalls on the way to cloud migration. Certainly, a big part of the challenge is having the skills on hand to take advantage of the Cloud. More often than not, companies can be so eager to take advantage of what cloud technology offers that leadership makes their choice on price and expediency alone. It looks like a good deal at the moment and they go for it without regard to how it will fit with their company.

Don’t make the same mistake. IronOrbit offers comprehensive, professionally managed services for a predictable monthly fee. We build it for you so that it works. You don’t need to wonder if you have the right skills in-house to make full use of it. At the same time, you’ll have all the flexibility and control that you want.

We invite you to check out our INFINITY Workspaces demo and then do your own proof-on-concept.

Call Today 1-888- 753-5060

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Increased Productivity and Collaboration is the real reason why AEC firms work with IronOrbit
The Reason Why AEC Firm MSA Partnered with IronOrbit

 

If there was a silver lining to the COVID pandemic, it exposed vulnerabilities in the way companies operate their business. As lockdowns and work-from-home orders spread across the country, companies scrambled for their employees to effectively work remotely.

MSA Professional Services, a 350-employee-owned civil engineering and environmental firm located across four states, was one such company. You might see their work as you drive past a park, a reservoir, or a public activity center. Satellites orbiting Earth record the environmental and community impact of their thoughtfully designed works from outer space.

MSA’s work requires real-time collaboration with project managers or contractors in the field. Management has known that conventional application delivery and desktop management technologies wouldn’t keep up with growing demands.

Months before anyone had even heard of COVID-19, the MSA leadership was looking at the best way for them to migrate their IT environment to the cloud. Like sculptors chiseling away at a block of marble, the process began to reveal what the right cloud design should look like. Leadership knew they needed control of their information. They needed their data to be secure, and, perhaps most importantly, their engineers needed to work on heavy-duty 2D and 3D files on resource-hungry applications from home.

IronOrbit solved the problems of end-user performance with GPU-Accelerated INFINITY Workspaces. Whether it’s fifty users or a thousand, engineers enjoy an even better and more highly responsive experience than they’d get from a high-end physical workstation. Since scalability is built into the design, MSA found that adding or subtracting users was not an issue.

SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY RESULTS IN A SUPERIOR SERVICE

An essential aspect of IronOrbit’s delivery of high performance at scale is the use of NVIDIA RTX™ Technology, powering the most demanding design, rendering, and engineering workloads from the cloud . This technology delivers rapid deployments of virtual applications and workspaces. MSA engineers can view and work with large 2D and 3D models with efficiency and increased productivity.

“WE NEED MORE CONTROL & SECURITY” – MSA Leadership

As these specific requirements came into focus, it narrowed their field of view as they considered different cloud service providers. Because of the level of control they wanted, together with the necessity for tight security, they knew they were looking for a private cloud approach.

But not just any private cloud.

The delivery of services from the end user’s perspective had to be fast and seamless with no latency or drag of any kind. There’s nothing worse for a designer or engineer than working on a modern app like AutoCAD or Revit, being in the home stretch of finalizing a project, and having to deal with jumpy, erratic responses from a mouse or a stylus pen.

…AND ONE MORE THING

To make the challenge even more interesting, many engineers live in rural areas with sub-standard internet connections.

Senior Systems Engineer Mike Albitz led a series of proof-of-concept drills with IronOrbit’s INFINITY Workspaces when the pandemic erupted. “When the pandemic broke out, it escalated the whole process,” said Albitz. “When COVID-19 started, we were able to provide latency-free desktops to our engineers with slow home Internet connections using IronOrbit. This was an invaluable option to keep our teams productive.”

CLOSE COLLABORATION WITH CLIENTS MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE

During the process of moving to the cloud, there will be technical challenges that pop up from time to time. The key is to address them as quickly as possible. This requires close communication and transparency. Built on a genuine commitment to customer service, IronOrbit onboarding teams maintain a high-touch with clients throughout the process and beyond.

Good luck getting an actual person to answer a question if you’re using a public cloud. Close client support isn’t part of their “do-it-yourself on our platform” business model.

This may be true of other private cloud companies as well, but not with IronOrbit.

For us, the standard is one-on-one human contact availability 24/7.

WHAT HAPPENS IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG?

It’s important to know that public cloud providers do not come standard with recovery time objectives (RTO) or recovery point objectives (RPO). It’s an add-on cost. With public cloud services, many features will fall under the category of an add-on cost.

IronOrbit offers comprehensive packages for predictable monthly fees, including standard 48-hour RTO and 24-hour RPO.

STRATEGY LEADS TECHNOLOGY (CONCLUSION)

MSA leadership was ahead of the pack going into 2020, and they’re still leading the way in the industry. They knew that they wanted to move into the cloud, and they realized that it had to be a high-impact, custom cloud and hosted desktop solution designed with AEC processes in mind.

The IronOrbit team applauds the long-term vision of the MSA leadership. They anticipated their need for better application hosting solutions and embraced the future of AEC cloud computing – INFINITY Workspaces. MSA put the focus in the right place. They explored technology based on their business operations and growth objectives.

What about you?

How well are your designers and engineers doing with off-the-shelf work-from-home solutions?

Have you gotten into a cloud environment that hasn’t been architected specifically for GPU-heavy workloads?

Let us give you a virtual tour of the INFINITY Workstation and discover what go-anywhere design efficiency combined with granular control and security can do for your business.

 

Call us at 1-888-753-5060 for your free consultation today.

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