Four reasons why SMEs need a cloud managed service provider

In many countries, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) serve as the foundation of the economy. This is certainly the case in Singapore, with SMEs accounting for two thirds of the total workforce and contributing to nearly half of Singapore’s GDP. Accordingly, the Singapore government’s drive for digital transformation of industry creates the need for those SMEs to not only adopt the latest digital technologies, but make effective use of them.  

If you are the leader of an SME with limited IT manpower and know-how, you might be struggling without getting the most out of your investment after migrating to cloud and even managing your IT costs.   Working with a cloud managed service provider (MSP) is a solution that does not require any overhaul of your organisational structure. 

In this article, we’ll examine four reasons your business may be in need of a cloud MSP and how an MSP partner can help you to resolve those challenges. 

Four reasons why SMEs need a cloud managed service provider

1. Manage inefficient workloads for your team

A study by Flexera found that as much as 35% of cloud spending by companies is wasted due to inefficiency. These inefficiencies may live in many areas of your cloud services from deployment and daily operations to application management and maintenance. 

The ineffective use of cloud tools can also be attributed to the general complexity of cloud services, with many SMEs now operating in a hybrid environment. An SME is less likely to have IT staff with sufficient experience and time resources to properly manage this kind of environment. 

This is why outsourcing management of your company’s cloud services and applications to a cloud MSP makes so much sense. An MSP can monitor your entire environment with a single-pane view, establish the necessary processes such as updating, archiving, and application management, and respond to any changes to ensure your cloud services are running at maximum efficiency. 

By removing the need to assign your internal team to manage your cloud infrastructure, you can focus on what’s most important to your company, such as product design and business development. Cloud MSPs like CloudMile, for example, offer comprehensive services ranging from optimising cloud performance and architecture review to new product recommendations. 

2. Compensate for your limited IT headcount  

The demand for IT talent in the marketplace has only increased during the pandemic - research shows that in 2021, 66% of businesses made plans to hire more tech talent in order to manage the IT demands created by remote work. 

Unlike the resources enterprises have, SMEs are more likely to have limited headcount for internal IT staff. Fortunately, it is becoming a much more common practice for IT demands like cloud management to be outsourced to a partner like an MSP. 

MSPs can fill in your SME’s talent gap and streamline your operations without requiring the onboarding of new staff, which can be costly as well as time-consuming. As mentioned above, this frees up your internal resources and lets your employees focus on the work that matters rather than spending precious work time on monitoring downtime, updating software, or allocating cloud resources.  

3. Control unseen and unnecessary cloud spend

If your SME is currently managing your own cloud infrastructure, there is a strong chance your IT staff is struggling to keep costs under control.  

Part of the challenge comes from the difficulty in choosing between two common payment models offered by cloud providers: subscriptions that can lead to unnecessary expenses on redundant services, or pay-per-use models that can quickly exhaust IT budgets when service usage goes beyond the original plan. Additionally, inefficient use of services as described above can create unneeded costs. 

A cloud MSP can help your SME to stay on top of cloud spending no matter which model you use. CloudMile’s Cloud Management Platform, MileLync , for example, enables monitoring of all cloud spending down to cloud services, billing trends, retrieval of monthly invoices and billing support. Besides, CloudMile offers “billing-as-a-service” which includes architecture review, MileLync platform, and complimentary 8x5 support. An MSP also keeps a rein on cloud spending by making sure there is no service overlap between teams as well as “right-sizing” over or under-utlized services. 

4. Protect your SME from a crippling cyberattack 

Following the pandemic, we are seeing a lessening gap between the number of cyber attacks targeting large enterprises and SMEs, and these attacks are becoming more sophisticated by the day. 

What’s more, an attack that might result in small losses or disruption to a large company could potentially cripple an SME that doesn’t possess the capital to recover from a major event. 

If you are already planning to increase your spending on cybersecurity, that’s great! We strongly suggest allocating a large portion of this investment to a cloud MSP partner with experience navigating the complexities of cloud security. 

With their deep expertise in the field and focused IT resources, a cloud MSP would ensure that no service or protections updates are being missed, as even one blip can make your company highly vulnerable to threats. An MSP will make sure your cloud infrastructure is on top of all the latest standards and scaling with them as needed. 

Accelerate your digital transformation with a Cloud MSP

In the era of digital transformation, outsourcing services to third parties to let companies focus on their core business is becoming the norm. Removing the burden of managing cloud infrastructure has become one of the top IT priorities. Beside solving inefficient cloud workflows and internal spending issues, a cloud MSP can make sure your cloud is well optimised, up-to-date, and cost effective while ensuring productivity as well as data security.