Shaping Cloud is excited to launch our new Managed Service offering, where we partner with our customers’ internal IT teams to deliver third line technical support. 

What has changed? Shaping Cloud has.

Traditionally, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) have combined first – third line support. Shaping Cloud now takes the sole route of the third line support. The third line approach will enable Shaping Cloud to partner with internal IT teams and focus on what a customer needs, supporting them in modernisation and innovation. 

The new Shaping Cloud Managed Service offering is designed to enable our customers to focus on what they do best, such as core business and high-value work; whilst we (Shaping Cloud) focus on the technology, providing our expertise and solutions to pain points. This approach is focused on exchanging and transferring knowledge and expertise, further developing our customer’s in-house teams, and adding true value to our services and customers’ experience. 

Shaping Cloud Managed Service support enables techies to talk to techies 

Shaping Cloud look to become an extension of your IT team. This enables your IT team to focus on what they do best, looking after their customers (your users) and enables us to focus on the technology.  Providing third line proactive and reactive services to customers who already have an internal IT team covering first and second line. 

We believe that no one knows the customers, product(s) and service(s), or organisational applications quite as well as the organisation. With that in mind we believe that the knowledge built up by the internal IT team is invaluable to the organisation. As such Shaping Cloud believes an organisation’s 1st and 2nd line support should be kept internal.  

We understand the pressures that internal IT teams can endure. From struggling to keep up to date with the latest technology developments and remaining in line with ever-changing legislations and guidelines, to ensuring the supplementary skills accompany those. It can be difficult. 

As third line Managed Service Providers this is what Shaping Cloud will bring. We hold the latest understanding; we know the technology and how you can benefit from it. Something many internal teams may lack.  

By gaining a third line MSP like Shaping Cloud, you will gain tech experts that can manage, prevent, and identify solutions continuously in the background, alleviating you of these worries, and allowing you to focus on BAU. 

What Managed Service offerings are now available? 

Shaping Cloud offers the following in its Managed Services: 

• Security

Reactive services such as advisory on demand, incident support and training. Proactive monitoring and advising on latest trends and security vulnerabilities with an option of agreed scope with recommendations. Services included will be least privileged access with PIM (Privileged Identity Management), Microsoft Defender 365 including defender for cloud, vulnerability management, patching, alerting, Zero trust protection and Microsoft sentinel etc. 

• Identity 

Access management which incorporates authorisation, and authentication. The identity offering will cover authenticating you into a service via various means. Such as a brokering authentication platform where you pass tokens from identity provider to a resource. Single sign-on, multi-factor authentication and PIM (privileged identity management) which includes just in time privileged access. Active Directory (AD) and Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). Ways to improve the handling of privileged accounts. PAWS (privileged access workstations),  protection of identities and accounts using MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) and Azure identity protection (AIP). 

• Modern work (Microsoft 365) 

Full Office 365 suite, including Exchange Online, Intune, Autopilot, Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint. Enabling the full modernisation of your technology suite ensuring best use of the technology set you have including cost optimisation.  

• Infrastructure (Azure-focused) 

Azure-focused workloads such as virtual machines (VMs), Platform as a Service (PaaS), platform management, DevOps change requests, and modernisation (shifting pieces in the right direction with our proactivity) including Cost Optimisation.  

You can find more information on our MSP services by contacting us directly on hello@shapingcloud.com.

Who is the new offering suited for?

Enterprise companies (300 users and over) with in-house IT looking for a modern and innovative partner who puts their customers first. Organisations who are already in Azure, or plan to migrate across to Azure. Our MSP services may also be attractive to organisations struggling to recruit or retain cloud expertise, or whose existing MSP contract will soon come to an end.  

How can Managed Services help organisations?

Managed Services (from the right provider) can enable their customer to focus on their end-users and the wider business operations, whilst their MSP Shaping Cloud can focus on the strengths of the Public Cloud offerings, ensuring the customer is always leaning forward. 

What expertise does Shaping Cloud hold?

Shaping Cloud was born in the hyperscale cloud in 2010 and has been continuously building on its expertise since. With a vast variety of both company and team competencies, Shaping Cloud is well equipped beyond Managed Services. 

Holding accredited specialisms in Application Development, Application Integration, Cloud Platform, Cloud Productivity (incl. modern desktop), Datacentre, DevOps and Security. Shaping Cloud are made up of expert DevOps Engineers, Azure Solutions Architects, Azure DevOps Engineers; as well as Azure Security Engineers, Azure Administrators, and Azure Developer Associates. 

We also hold expertise with VMWare / Citrix / Cisco / PRINCE 2 / Agile / ITIL – all with a dose of real-world operational experience. 

End your Managed Service search today

As your trusted Managed Service Provider (MSP) we will provide expertise, ensuring alignment with industry standards, taking a scaled and agile approach. Our services are set to alleviate the pressure of your organisation becoming an expert, or more costly, having to recruit one. 

We understand that the hardest aspect of any transformation is building the momentum required to push through substantial changes that need to be made to truly realise the benefit(s). By having an MSP solely focused on managing those changes we have seen our partners achieve digital transformation and realisation far quicker than those who attempt to spin both plates at the same time.

Book in a meeting with one of our experts. If you have any further questions, please contact us directly at hello@shapingcloud.com.