For some of us old-school IT experts, exploring public cloud services is a significant hurdle. In our work history, we have been accustomed to having physical hardware in racks to embrace. For some of us, knowing where our organization’s data is located is crucial. The public cloud may also seem challenging, as there is much new to learn and internalize. So where to start?
Business Needs Flexibility
We cannot ignore that the agility of public cloud services fascinates us. From a business perspective, the ease and speed of setting up services are crucial today. On the other hand, business needs can change just as quickly – it might be wise to quickly dispose of old resources, which could become a burden in a traditional environment.
It is advisable to at least familiarize yourself with Azure public cloud services today, to know its possibilities. Not everything should or even can be moved to the public cloud. However, we can enhance things with the public cloud. And what could be an easier way to start exploring Azure cloud than by enhancing the maintenance of your traditional server environment, saving your own work time, leaving us IT experts with more time to serve the business.
Saving Your Own Work Time and Resources
In many organizations, the server environment is still managed manually. It is not uncommon to hear how IT experts tend to take care of updates on different servers once a month – or less frequently, if they remember. Your server setup might still be running WSUS servers for servers, if not even for workstations.
However, the public cloud has already begun to change the landscape. Microsoft’s Intune services changed the workstation field years ago, and servers have also gained hybrid management capabilities on the Azure cloud side. It is mainly about the fact that awareness has not yet reached everyone. Centralizing server management with Azure Arc technology in your own Azure cloud enables centralized management and automation. Azure’s Update Manager services and its reporting could save IT experts several hours monthly if implemented.
The public cloud frees up our IT experts’ valuable time and also resources previously dedicated to SCCM and WSUS servers in our server environment for other more sensible uses. How about starting to explore?
Working on Your Own Azure Governance Model?
The Azure Governance Model is often discussed as an important part of adopting Azure public cloud services. And it is indeed so in practice. It is good to plan how to operate together with different stakeholders on the public cloud side and how to manage the resources there.
In any case, when you start bringing your traditional environment’s servers under Azure cloud management, this management should be documented. At the same time, you will familiarize yourself with the various services of the Azure cloud and the ways it enables managing and maintaining different resources – both in Azure and outside it in a hybrid manner. In my opinion, this can be a good way to get acquainted with the Azure public cloud. To explore its services and, above all, to learn new things while doing things carefully.
Explore our service: Azure Governance Model Planning
As a house offering ‘consigliere’ or trusted advisor services to the IT departments of various organizations, our task is to provide the framework and introduction to the Azure cloud easily and safely. At the same time, we bring our expertise to your IT department. The benefits achieved with the public cloud often manifest as savings in everyday work time and other resources.