women staring out of window thinking of challenges

The challenges we help with

Your public cloud costs are spiralling

If you’ve lifted and shifted everything into the public cloud, you could find your costs are spiralling. And you might not know this, but depending on your hybrid cloud needs, there are different billing models to keep costs optimised. A mix of pay as you go for the resources you consume, along with a set monthly amount for a set amount of capacity. With hybrid cloud you can get the best of both worlds.

Legacy applications and infrastructure are making things almost impossible

We’ll help you find the apps you can easily lift and shift, then once you have some apps in the cloud, we can pull together a strategy so the new can communicate with the old. As part of this we’ll help you modernise any legacy apps. This will reduce complexity and increase compatibility – enabling your hybrid cloud strategy to run like clockwork, now and in the future.

You’re worried about security and compliance

Microsoft Azure comes with native features for identity, application and network security (like defender, sentinel and multi factor authentication). And, for ultimate data security, you can bolster these security features if and when needed with solutions like SD-WAN, perimeter and application Firewalls, and a Managed Security service for incident detection and response.

You don’t have the skills or people you need to manage a cloud

Feeling like it’s an uphill struggle with time or budgets to hire and train technical staff are common hurdles for businesses. A Managed Service Provider (MSP) should follow the best industry recognised practices and frameworks. So, when you need support, there’s someone there to get things done quickly and effectively. You’ll want to work with someone you can trust to look after your business’s most valuable asset (your data) 24/7, 365 days a year.

Your hands are tied by limitations of your current solution

Public cloud services (much like SaaS platforms) are always being updated with new features. They roll them out and you just get to start using them. So, you don’t need to grapple with planning and long periods of downtime. And you don’t need to worry about updating hardware when something changes (they deal with that).

Managed SD-WAN Cityscape

Re-assessing your cloud strategy

With radical accelerated and unplanned digital transformation, we’ve found that some businesses have had to adopt the public cloud quicker than they’d planned in the last few years. And are now dealing with larger bills than they would like. Because there wasn’t a lot of time to consider which data should live in which cloud, many businesses opted to lift and shift everything in one go. And with the Public Cloud being a consumption-based model – the more stuff you move, the more cloud resource you use. This has led to:  

  • spiralling costs (due to legacy licenses)   
  • bloated environments   
  • un-optimised workloads in the cloud   
  • buying IT solutions to try and solve problems that maybe didn’t exist before   
  • buying IT solutions that were actually solving the wrong problem.  

Now that businesses are aware of the challenges, they’re taking a more strategic approach to finding the best clouds for the right workloads. And the answer tends to be – a Hybrid Cloud strategy.  

What is a Hybrid Cloud?

Hybrid Cloud management is a way to knit together a public and private cloud to give you something that’s the right fit for your business. We’ll bring your data, apps, users, and multiple customers together with one centrally managed service with one simple monthly bill.   

No matter which way you decide to knit your different clouds together – the benefits of hybrid cloud management are the same. You’ll get a single monthly bill for everything. It doesn’t matter if we’re managing your On Premise Cloud, if Microsoft are playing a part through Azure, or any other combination you need. And, when your demand increases beyond the capability of an on-premise data centre, your cloud infrastructure can instantly scale up or down to handle excess capacity.   

Hybrid cloud is a particularly good match for businesses looking to adhere to industry regulations around sensitive data, while still having access to the scale and collaboration they need. With Hybrid cloud management, you can have certain data on-premise (or in a private cloud) and certain data in the public cloud. This gives businesses the flexibility they need by using a public cloud for less regulated tasks while still meeting what’s been asked of them when it comes to data sovereignty and compliance. 

Want to know how Hybrid Cloud can help your business?

Why iomart

We’re masters at putting the right data in the right place

Cloud solutions are at the centre of everything we do, and we’ve been delivering them successfully for more than 20 years. We know how to build robust cloud strategies for our customers, because we take the time to really assess your business needs.   

There’s no standard hybrid cloud, so we look to find the right mix of cloud solutions that are perfect for you. If some of your applications sit best in a private cloud and some are best in the public cloud – a hybrid cloud could be the answer you’re looking for.   

With hybrid cloud you can take advantage of all of the advanced functionality of the public cloud (things like AI, analytics and Webscale content delivery for example). But you might not need this advanced functionality for all of your workloads. So you can lean on iomart cloud (our private cloud) to manage the rest of your workloads at a fraction of the cost.   

The right clouds for the right workloads. It’s as straightforward as that.   

cloud floating above tablet

Choose the right hybrid cloud managed service for you

To help keep things straightforward, we’ve bundled the most common things we’re asked for into a single foundational service we call ‘Essential’. It includes all the features you simply can’t do without.    

 

Some businesses (with more advanced needs) decide to build on our Essential service by adding one or more wide-ranging managed services. Naturally, we’ve called this our ‘Enhanced’ managed service.  

 

We’re all-in for transparency and fairness, that’s why we’re keen for you to pick and pay for the exact support you need (all based on how you’re utilising your cloud resources) instead of paying for support as a percentage of your total monthly cloud cost. 

man at a laptop in a server room

Essential

This service primarily gives you support for basic capabilities within your cloud management portal. This covers your cloud computing, storage, networking, and basic security functionality. We’ve also added support for standard data management like Backup and Disaster Recovery.   

Image

Enhanced

Builds on our Essential offering by adding additional layers of management service around your platform like guest OS management, virtual desktop infrastructure and database support.  

Technology users

The technology we support

These all form part of our hybrid cloud management software toolkit:   

Microsoft Azure

iomart Virtual Cloud (latest VMware Cloud Director)

iomart Private Cloud (latest VMware vSphere)

iomart Cloud Desktop

Microsoft 365

Why we're different

Why you’re likely to pick us out from a crowd

One straightforward bill

For everything. Each month. That’s it.

Connect with real humans

Rather than automated responses and chatbots, with iomart you’ll have access to 200+ trained and accredited support staff and engineers. As well as being there to support you 24/7, we’re always looking for opportunities to continuously improve your services based on your specific business needs. Our humans are good at that.

All under one roof

We’ll bring everything together so it can be managed all in one place.

Flexibility baked in

If you have data with different levels of security, we’ll make sure no-one gets access to anything they shouldn’t.

No person-in-the-middle

We’ll handle everything for you, so you’re not batted back and forth, having umpteen conversations with different providers.

Service management as standard

Lean on our ITIL-aligned service desk for support with all the features and services of your cloud environments.

Tailored to suit you

We understand that everyone’s business is different (and so are their needs) so our consultants will build a hybrid cloud strategy that works for you.

who we work with

Trusted to deliver by these brands

We Buy Any CarUniversal Music GroupBTBBCBritish Red CrossWheatley GroupClarion HousingCoverys

Want to know how Hybrid Cloud can help your business?