MANAGED SERVICES
Managed Azure Services
Managed Azure Services Partner for Your Software Hosting
A managed Azure services partner supports your cloud environment and infrastructure, ensuring that your hosted data and systems are secure, working efficiently and cost-effectively without having to burden your team with day-to-day maintenance and oversight. While one of the most popular cloud-based platforms for hosting applications, IT infrastructure assets and other digital solutions, Microsoft Azure does not handle itself – maintaining your investment requires managing the different components manually, from local security hygiene to performance capacity. An Azure MSP (managed service provider) absorbs that work on your behalf, so your setup runs smoothly while your team remains focused on keeping your business going.
What are Managed Azure Hosting Services?
Managed hosting services cover the ongoing work of running your cloud infrastructure and environment after your migration goes live: monitoring, security management, backup, patching, cost management and support. A partner takes that work on either as a full outsourcing arrangement or as an extension of your internal IT team. What stays constant is that someone with the right experience runs the platform day to day so your staff can stay on their actual jobs. Working with an MSP means a fully managed Azure environment rather than server space you are left to configure on your own. Microsoft is accountable for the data centers, the hardware and the virtualization layer, but on a virtual machine, patching, configuration, access control, backup policy and cost decisions all remain yours. A managed Azure services partner takes over that half of the shared responsibility and maintains it as your workloads change.
Why Choose SWK Technologies as Your Azure Partner
Hosting with SWK Technologies means a fully managed Azure environment rather than server space you are left to run yourself. SWK is an award-winning MSP and Microsoft partner with a dedicated cloud service team, which puts licensing, deployment planning, day to day management and long-term consulation under one relationship instead of siloed between multiple vendors. That same team supports your Sage and Acumatica applications running inside your Azure instance, giving you the option to only have to deal with one provider for any issues and allowing you to streamline major updates and other maintenance requests without having to bounce between contacts.
SWK Technologies has worked with thousands of midmarket businesses managing ERP and financial management solutions, and knows what your hosting platform has to account for. The complexity of maintaining your hosted IT infrastructure and application environment stays with SWK so your team does not have to worry about the following:
- Security and Backup – Security management and monitoring, automated backups, patch management and disaster recovery planning are built into your environment from the start rather than added after an incident.
- Lifecycle and Configuration – From initial architecture through ongoing tuning and version management, SWK handles the full lifecycle of your Azure environment as your business grows.
- Billing and Cost Optimization – Azure costs climb without the right oversight, so SWK advises on setup and right-sizing to help you avoid waste and understand what you are paying for.
- Direct Support – You reach the team that built and manages your environment, rather than submitting a ticket to Microsoft’s general support queue and waiting for a response.
- Development Support – When your team needs to build or customize something inside Azure, SWK can support that custom development work alongside the management engagement.
- Identity and Access – Configuration of authentication and access policies keeps decisions about who reaches what aligned with how your business actually operates.
- Virtual desktop and server workloads – SWK builds and runs virtual desktop environments alongside the servers they connect to, so staff reach their applications through a managed session instead of a local install.
- Migration and cutover – SWK evaluates your existing network and servers first, then plans the move into Azure around the capacity your team actually needs.
- Networking and connectivity — Virtual networks, site-to-site VPN or ExpressRoute links back to your offices and load balancing are configured so your hosted servers and your on-premise sites behave like one connected environment.
- Server and storage capacity — Windows and Linux virtual machines get sized to the workload and paired with blob, file or disk storage, with replication across regions handled as part of the build rather than bolted on later.
- Hybrid environments — Not every asset has to move at once, and SWK plans which servers stay on-premise, which run in Azure and how the two connect while the transition is underway.
- Microsoft Partnership – One team and one relationship covering licensing, deployment planning, long-term management and advisement on where Azure fits.
Azure Management for ERP Hosting
Different ERP applications feature different architectures, coding and requirements, which makes any one-size-fits-all models for cloud hosting problematic. SWK Technologies will work with your team to ensure you get the most out of Azure and are able to tailor your environment to your needs. This includes helping with:
- Client access – ERP applications that run as Windows desktop clients need a session host layer, which Azure Virtual Desktop provides by publishing either full desktops or individual applications.
- Session host licensing – Session hosts running a Windows Server operating system also require Remote Desktop Services client access licenses issued from a license server.
- License portability – Existing Windows Server and SQL Server licensing can follow the workload into Azure under Azure Hybrid Benefit, though eligibility is limited to core-based licenses with active Software Assurance or a qualifying subscription.
- Recovery objectives – Recovery point and recovery time targets have to be set before the design is built, because a replicated availability group and a nightly restore produce very different downtime.
- Supporting workloads — An ERP rarely runs alone, and the CRM, data warehouse, custom applications, file shares and integrations around it can share the same hosted environment under the same management and support.
- Database hosting — Whether the database belongs on a virtual machine, in Azure SQL Database or in SQL Managed Instance depends on what your ERP version supports, and SWK confirms that before the environment is built.
Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for Multiple Apps
Your ERP rarely stands on its own in your IT stack. Your CRM software, payroll applications, order management integrations, the middleware moving data between them, your network assets, reporting databases and file shares all sit on top of each, and each workload has a different Azure cloud model behind it. SWK Technologies helps you manage these disparate components together in one hosted environment and supports the connections between them, instead of leaving each application with a separate provider and no one accountable for the middle.
Why Businesses Choose SWK for Azure
Most businesses that come to SWK were already running in Azure and already had support in place, just not support that was working. The environment was deployed by a provider without Azure-specific experience, or tickets sat unanswered or costs grew month over month without an explanation.
Here are a few past scenarios that SWK’s Azure services team have helped resolve for customers:
- Lack of Azure experience – SWK maintains a dedicated Azure team rather than a generalist practice, with experience in midmarket environments and the nuances that matter for Sage and Acumatica hosting.
- Unresponsive support – Tickets that sit unanswered for days leave you without help when something breaks, and you need a person who already knows your environment instead of a queue.
- Mismanaged environments – Misconfigurations are expensive, so SWK advises on architecture, right-sizing and resource management to keep your environment optimized rather than merely running.
- Compliance pressure – Industries carrying strict security and compliance requirements need a partner who understands the nuances, not a provider who can only spin up a virtual machine.
- No single point of accountability – Splitting licensing, hosting and support across separate vendors leaves gaps between them, and one relationship covering all three removes the handoffs.
