The issue of IT outsourcing has become major for a lot of companies, post Covid-19. Although there is no standardized procedure for setting up an outsourcing project, that will define the scope of an outsourcing project.
The issue of IT outsourcing has become major for a lot of companies, post Covid-19.
Although there is no standardized procedure for setting up an outsourcing project, it is a set of criteria related to hosting, data security, access conditions or good practices in terms of hosting, which will define the scope of an IT outsourcing project.
The whole purpose of the operation being to move his IT to a new environment, outsourced to his company and able to offer prospects for development, security, updating and maintenance in the more or less long term.
Why IT outsourcing has become an essential step in the life of SMEs?
Issues related to the recruitment of competent profiles
It is increasingly difficult to manage all of its infrastructures on-premise. The complexity of IT services and the difficulty of stabilizing an IT architecture, even for an organization made up of a dozen individuals, can prove to be a daunting challenge.
This is why in a logic of maintaining its on-premise IT infrastructure , it is necessary to use profiles of multi-skilled individuals. However, these profiles are rare, which implies on the part of human resources a specific work of qualification to recruit the good profiles.
The shortage of multi-skilled profiles on the job market is therefore one of the first explanations why a company will turn to IT outsourcing . It will be easier to deport the management of your IT to a specialized service provider. Moreover, this obstacle to maintaining IT within the company represents a significant financial burden in addition to being a recruitment constraint.
IT outsourcing covers all needs, from consulting to operational implementation
Frequently when a company goes through the doors of a data center to have part of its information system hosted there , it ends up delegating the management of its infrastructure and its IT services more broadly than what was initially planned.
And the explanation is relatively simple. Why keep part of the servers, virtual machines or business solutions under charge when a host can offer it with a high level of security, guarantee and insurance, the potential cost of which, if the company had to bear it alone, would be way too high?
All [infrastructures – advice – support – proposed IT solutions] are accessible at the same point. By outsourcing, a company offloads the technical difficulty and security to enter into a consulting relationship where it can develop its IT with the evolution of its activities .
It will be able to access, among other things, migration services for a complete software architecture, maintenance in operational conditions of its infrastructures, outsourced backups , implementation of a disaster recovery plan , dedicated server rooms, certified HDS or PCI DSS according to the sector of activity.
In terms of electricity, internet and telecom networks, IT outsourcing allows a company to access secure speeds at high volumes, without the risk of power cuts thanks to the redundancy of the links set up by the Datacenter. The same goes for physical access security, which is an integral part of the offers offered by data centers: camera, fingerprint access codes, motion detector, fire detector, 24/7 remote monitoring, as many devices expensive to set up for a single company.
How to choose a local datacenter and play the IT outsourcing card?
The geographical location of the data and their access
Before renting a computer bay , it is important for a company to know where its data will be located . This has become a constant for many companies which now seek to maintain maximum control over their data, their hosting locations and the use that will be made of them.
For a company, the best way to get an overview of a hosting site is to be able to go there. The discovery of the Datacenter, the infrastructures and the installations, the possibility of observing the technical choices made in terms of security or the fact of meeting the technical teams present on site, have become prerequisites for a company to entrust the management of its computer hardware and data.
Technical teams, the central link in a good customer relationship
The technical support services offered, as well as the level of advice and support will be elements that differentiate between comparable hosting centres.
Some datacenters are dry hosting areas that do not necessarily offer advanced support services and local gestures, which are necessary for any hardware and software outsourcing project .
It is therefore the relationship of trust between the hosting center, its staff and the client that is created through the support teams on site. Understanding the missions, constraints and objectives specific to each, although sometimes implicit, remains fundamental and should not be left to chance. This is what will allow, for example, to better understand the level of security of the installations announced by the Datacenter and that actually delivered to the customer elsewhere.
Identify the Datacenter that will meet the hosting constraints
When preparing to outsource its servers to a local datacenter , it is necessary to be able to raise several questions, related to the services provided by the host and their adequacy with the IT outsourcing project.
- The security level of the global infrastructure.
- The guarantee of insurance and support in the event of loss of data, external incident, etc.
- The level of assistance in the event of hardware or infrastructure failure.
- Access time to the hosting center and the data hosted there.
- Constraints of use and confidentiality obligations related to data, once hosted.
- The availability of the services provided by the Datacenter.
- The level of on-site support and advice.
A Datacenter capable of offering advice, services and innovative technologies in order to coincide with the evolution of the uses of its customers, will a priori raise these questions.
Local Datacenters are tending towards more adaptability in the face of offers from major cloud providers
Faced with the complexity of major cloud offers (Azure Cloud, GCP or Amazon), which are difficult to approach both from a technical and price point of view, companies tend to approach local service providers .
They do this because of a finer and more transparent knowledge of their invoicing, made possible thanks to mid-sized hosts offering a close advisory relationship with their customers.
This rapprochement towards local clouds and therefore local Datacenters , also finds its explanation through the level of security provided, which is also measurable and transparent. The possibility of benefiting from tailor-made sizing by being informed in your choices by an account manager.
A local and proximity data center can offer this level of transparency and support, because the personalization of the customer contract is the strongest there.
Similarly, the level of knowledge of the functioning of large clouds within local Datacenters has been completely transformed. Engineers and technicians can train in their technologies and obtain certifications validating their skills, whether at Azure Cloud, GCP or Amazon.
This makes it possible to offer support services on these very complex environments to companies that would also like to move towards the hybrid or multi-cloud cloud, for example. Thus, technological expertise has also been outsourced over time in some ways, to local accommodation units.
IT outsourcing therefore leads companies to turn to local hosts with seasoned profiles on these cloud technologies. And the issues addressed can be very specific: migrating to the public cloud, cloud project deployment, database outsourcing and management, hybrid cloud environment management, etc.
Even if the response of the local data center and associated services would not be the only one, it is still important to consider the issue of maintenance and monitoring of its infrastructure from different angles. Whether your IT is hosted by a cloud provider or at your premises (“on premises”), questions related to the management of its life cycle cannot be excluded from the equation.
The appearance of local datacenters capable of offering hosting and IT services similar to those of the large clouds is a solution to a growing need for more personalized support and advice.
