Moving workloads to the cloud? Many healthcare organizations (HCOs) are using cloud services to personalize experiences, design value-based care and home health, and to drive better patient outcomes – all without having to build and operate their own data centers. Although moving to the cloud is an easy decision for many HCOs, maintaining security and compliance may present unexpected challenges. While large enterprises may have the resources and teams to engineer new cloud-native apps, many midsized organizations struggle to hire and maintain the in-house expertise needed to architect and maintain cloud services securely and compliantly. In these instances, managed cloud services can augment their existing workforce – and its expertise.
About Managed Cloud Services
Managed services have supported businesses for decades –including remote infrastructure services, hosted services, and remote operations – among others. Today’s leading MSP’s include cloud offerings, which is a deployment model, to the managed services operating model. Any MSP vendor should offer the following critical services:
- Monitoring and notification of cloud services – In today’s software environments, any app will broadcast an event notification. Managed Cloud providers should provide monitoring of the cloud-hosted app as well as the network.
- Service desk – In the event of an outage, your help desk employees need a way to contact the provider. This can be with calls or emails, and typically results in the creation of “trouble tickets.” It also includes logging incidents and requests, managing and escalating incidents and trouble tickets, and closing the loop by informing you of the status of incidents and problems.
- Service delivery management – A dedicated point of contact and trusted advisor who is the expert on your cloud environments and your Business Associate Agreement (BAA), the legally required document that outlines the Covered Entity’s duty and those of the Business Associate. In healthcare, this role brings to the table knowledge of cloud and HITRUST expertise to protect your organization’s investments and navigate the nuances of each cloud provider. Above all else, this trusted advisor saves you time and money.
- Cloud optimization services – As you launch projects, you consume cloud computing resources. Some of those may continue to operate unnoticed in the background, resulting in wasted costs for unused services. An MSP should optimize your use of cloud services to maximize ROI.
Three Reasons to Rely on Managed Cloud Services vs DIY
- Multi-cloud expertise. While your initial strategy may start with one provider, what about tomorrow? Will your internal IT capabilities move as fast as your business strategy? An MSP that partners with all the leaders in public cloud services can make you more agile and future-proof your multi-cloud strategy.
- Ensure governance with domain-specific security and compliance reporting. While the public clouds have adopted compliance frameworks, it’s up to your organization to determine which policies must be applied to protect your confidential information. When it comes to security services, you need assurance that you are protected from threats unique to cloud. Even better, an MSP with insight into threats specific to HCO’s will focus and fortify your defenses.
- Quickly deliver cost-effective state-of-the-art compliance and security. Hiring experts in cloud security, healthcare-specific compliance, and cloud operations is expensive and time consuming. Once you’ve found them – ramping them up, deciding how to best deploy and secure your applications in the cloud, and working to deliver – it will require even more time and money.
Choose the Right Managed Services Partner
Partnering with ClearDATA Managed Health Cloud lets you avoid a host of problems and focus on your business, your application, and delivering it to your customers as quickly as possible – all while ClearDATA keeps you secure and compliant. Our team of experts is well versed in the major public clouds, how to best protect cloud healthcare applications, and how compliance frameworks regulate data. Whether you are only beginning your cloud journey or already have advanced cloud maturity and want to innovate even further, reach out to our team here.
