criteria for selecting a Top 10 managed services provider How cloud and managed services help IT deliver business value services Overview To accelerate their digital transformation, many organizations are adopting new technologies like cloud, mobile and analytics. Adopting these technologies is resulting in a diverse and complex hybrid IT environment unlike anything we have seen, spanning multiple delivery models, vendors, processes and data. Things get even more complicated when you factor in flat or shrinking IT budgets, inflexible IT systems and rising management costs. Many organizations attempting to manage such complex hybrid environments are simply unable to deliver on the digital transformation agendas that their businesses require. As a result, organizations of all sizes are examining their strategies to see whether the IT services they design and deliver in-house can be more valuable, efficient and effective when provided by a managed services vendor. Managed services span a range of capabilities, creating options for IT organizations looking to benefit from externally provided services that allow them to focus on more business-critical issues and strategic functions and activities. Cloud solutions increase this range of choices, providing more potential than ever for IT organizations to transform. The potential benefits of managed services can be achieved by selecting the right provider—one that can demonstrate the ability to provide skills, processes and resources that exceed your in-house capabilities. When you evaluate managed services providers, consider the following 10 criteria to help you make an informed decision. 2 Deep skills 1 and experience Any managed services provider should, skill sets, how specialists are organized as a baseline, have certified skills that and share knowledge, and how best 34% go beyond basic operating system practices are communicated. A managed maintenance and availability management. services provider should have deep of IT leaders say Ask about skill levels related to managing expertise across all delivery models and their teams lack change, virtualization, high availability, vendors, including not only managed the right skills for middleware and databases, multiple services and cloud but also traditional IT delivering new network technologies, cross-platform and strategic outsourcing. In this way, the technology for 1 integration, mobility, security and, of provider can help you achieve an integrated their organization. course, cloud technologies—both public multisourcing strategy—in-house, managed and private. Also, inquire about scalability services, outsourcing and cloud—structured and availability of staff with specialized to meet your needs. Please watch the video below to learn more. 3 Proactive, technology- 2 based approach Find out whether the services service provider improvement. Look for provider has a “break/fix” mentality technologies that provide such capabilities 44% or a proactive approach that emphasizes as sophisticated alert mechanisms, problem prevention and continuous automated workload categorization of IT executives improvement. Does the potential provider and prioritization, automated incident say lack of go beyond simple monitoring and device escalation and remediation. visibility is the management? For example, employing primary challenge sophisticated technologies like advanced Read the full report to dive deeper into of managing analytics can drive incident prevention intelligent monitoring and the preemptive across the entire 2 by analyzing failure patterns across management of hybrid IT. IT environment. platforms and processes, affording visibility into areas for customer and 4 Scaling DevOps for cloud- 3 enabled IT transformation Maximizing the benefits of cloud businesses have implemented agile computing for a digital transformation DevOps methods, including continuous isn’t an easy task. Challenges include integration and delivery (CI/CD), to not only technological integration, but improve business processes and increase changing company processes, culture the pace of application development and and organizational structures that might business innovation. have been in place for years. To meet the challenges of this transformation, many Learn more about using DevOps for digital transformation across your enterprise. 5 Consistent processes, 4 knowledge management and consolidated service visibility Enterprises have a need to innovate rapidly Also important is the means by which and run IT services across diverse hybrid a services provider provides visibility into 76% multicloud environments with consistency the health of your infrastructure and the of IT leaders and visibility. As such, many are turning performance of your managed services. say they intend to managed services providers to help Look for a security-rich, web-based portal to use a partner accelerate their business transformation. that consolidates related services into a as part of their single dashboard with access to real-time plan to improve The right services partner will help your service visibility. IT infrastructure company minimize risk and cost while management.1 leveraging new and existing investments Discover how Japan Airlines worked with to innovate; simplify the implementation IBM to build a flexible IT environment that and management of modern infrastructure evolves as its business needs change. that can scale rapidly; and effectively manage your application landscape. 6 Support for multivendor, multicloud 5 environments and strong relationship Today’s IT infrastructures are typically and emerging technologies. A truly vendor- heterogeneous, hybrid environments neutral services provider should be able to of traditional IT—composed of hardware, play the role of broker—helping you plan, software and network products—and buy, manage and operate across multiple public and private clouds from a variety cloud models and providers that can of vendors. A services provider should facilitate the best fit for your business. have at minimum proven experience working with multivendor, multicloud See how VE Commercial Vehicles hybrid environments—and more simplified and streamlined support for its important, have relationships with leading multivendor environment across locations vendors to help ensure availability today by working with IBM Services. and visibility into product evolution paths 7 Consistent global service delivery, 6 with options for local resources Choosing a managed services provider Ask whether a services provider employs with global capabilities can position standard delivery processes across all companies of all sizes for growth locations and how multilocation teams and expansion in today’s economy. are organized and communicate. Global delivery capabilities offer many advantages, including rapid Learn more about gaining business implementation in new locations, the efficiency with an integrated, managed ability to effectively manage customer hybrid infrastructure. projects that span operations in multiple countries, local-language support for branches or subsidiaries, and in-country location of resources and data to help address regulatory and legal requirements. 8 Create a strong foundation for 7 your hybrid cloud environment The momentum for companies moving To address this market need, the their critical business applications to demand has grown for public cloud 90% the cloud remains steady and strong. stacks available on dedicated, on- However, many companies run workloads premises infrastructures. A managed of organizations that simply can’t move to a public cloud, services partner can provide a dedicated, will continue or don’t fit into the public cloud model. private managed cloud infrastructure using or plan Reasons for these limitations can include that helps deliver a consistent, scalable, to start using data transfer latency issues, security and OpEx-based, as-a-service capability. You private cloud(s) compliance risks, or management and get all benefits of a public cloud while in the next 1-2 1 maintenance roadblocks. still adhering to GDPR, data residency years. restrictions and security requirements. Learn more about hybrid cloud transformation in a pay-per-use model. 9 Broad portfolio of managed services 8 aligned to your business model You need the flexibility to add managed Also, look for a provider that offers flexibility services without adding unnecessary cost in doing business with you, such as giving and complexity to your sourcing strategy. you the option to retain your current Many organizations find that services equipment and, where it makes sense, fragmentation—using multiple managed your current processes. services vendors—perpetuates silos and hinders agility. To preserve future Understand the risks and rewards of flexibility, require that any prospective moving enterprise applications to a provider offer a thorough suite of managed multicloud environment. services, including infrastructure and enterprise application management; managed security, resilience and mobility; and managed hosting and cloud. 10 Technology foresight 9 and a path to innovation With strategic partnering becoming What competitive advantages could increasingly prevalent, it’s important to you gain from access to—or even better, consider the impact sourcing relationships collaboration with—the provider’s research can have—not only on business outcomes and development function? How can the but also on a company’s core business provider’s expertise, assets,