You’ve heard of hiring a broker for your stocks, your mortgage, and your investments. Did you also know there are brokerages that will help you manage your business’ cloud services?
Many organizations find they are making use of multiple cloud services for everything from data storage to productivity tracking. Cloud service brokerages (CSBs) help to organize and enhance those services.
What do CSBs do?
CSBs work much like other brokerages in that they help consumers to manage their cloud services portfolio. Major tasks taken on by CSBs include aggregation (finding lots of services), integration (knitting those services together), and customization (adding value to services on behalf of the consumer) brokerage. These cloud computing experts help manage SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS services from multiple sources so you can focus on the big picture.
CSBs do a few major things to make your day-to-day business easier:
- Provide expertise, advice, and easy access to service options via a catalogue
- Enhance accessibility and value of existing cloud services
- Bridge the gap between consumers and service providers on a technical level
- Manage multiple passwords, data streams, payments and providers through one convenient portal
How do I pick the right CSB?
It’s easy to know what services your organization needs, but it can be a more complicated task to choose a broker. When determining is working with a CSB is right for your organization, ask yourself the following questions:
- Do you plan to use enough cloud services to warrant working with a CSB? If you are only using one or two services, it may be possible to deal with them internally.
- Do you have staff with the technical knowledge needed to work with multiple cloud service providers? Worry about the big picture and leave the technical stuff to your CSB.
- Are there more important tasks you staff could be performing instead of managing cloud service accounts? Even when you have a top-rate IT team, they still have other duties to perform. Using a CSB frees up time your staff would otherwise be using to manage your cloud services.
- Does the CSB already play a role in your cloud service consumption? If they already know a bit about your organization, it will be easier for them to help you as you move forward with new cloud services.
You can learn more about cloud services and CSBs through our Cloud Services page.
