KennethThe momentum of both the cloud computing and manufacturing industries make them a powerful force when combined. The colossal growth that’s been observed shows that when utilized together, cloud computing can be a very capable tool to assist the growing needs of manufacturing companies. While historically, manufacturing companies have been hesitant to adopt new models of business, more and more are seeing the benefit of partnering with a cloud service provider to achieve goals and milestones.
Cloud Computing 101: What is a Cloud Service Provider?
There are a variety of services available that offer utilization of the cloud. Here are the primary categories:
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SaaS |
IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) |
PaaS |
| Much like the name implies, companies receive access to a software vendor, but the software is accessible via the internet. All uptime and performance metrics are the responsibility of the SaaS provider. | IaaS provides companies with cloud computing resources that support their overall corporate cloud environment. Many other cloud services utilize IaaS providers. | Much like SaaS in that it is reliant on a third-party Infrastructure provider, PaaS allows entities to deploy a stack suited for a particular application without dealing with additional components. |
Which Cloud Service Provider is Superior? IaaS.
Of all services, IaaS is undoubtedly the most comprehensive cloud service, and provides the most effectiveness towards manufacturing goals. The flexibility of Infrastructure as a Service allows accommodations regarding specific corporate network and/or cloud requirements. Specifically, utilizing a managed private cloud allows for optimized security procedures, complete control of your environment, and guaranteed quality service/performance. An added benefit is that many cloud service providers like Wowrack offer Disaster Recovery efforts such as offsite backups and 24/7/265 monitoring.
Benefits of Cloud Computing in Manufacturing
There are three main areas that utilizing a cloud computing platform can assist your specific Manufacturing needs:
- Hyper-Customized Solutions
- Maximization of Performance & Efficiency
- Effective ERP Extending to Corporate Cloud
Hyper-Customized Solutions
By working with a managed cloud provider such as Wowrack, manufacturing companies are able to enjoy the freedom of creating an infrastructure that is completely customized to their needs and goals. By combining initiatives into one platform, you can reduce human and financial resource usage through the efficiency of a hosted cloud solution.
Similarly, as your manufacturing company grows, it’s imperative that your technology is able to keep up. Undoubtedly, manufacturing companies are finding that managed cloud solutions are the method in which to do so with minimal interruptions. By working with an IaaS provider, you are able to smoothly scale up without interference in performance or security.
Maximization of Performance & Efficiency
There is a constantly-growing pressure for manufacturers to stay ahead of their competition in terms of accuracy benchmarks, increase processing speed, and optimize cross-channel interactions. This is primarily due to very small time-to-market requirements on top of fast product life-cycles.
Given this hyper-competitive environment, power outages that cause downtime or data loss can be devastating to manufacturing companies. The traditional solution to offsetting these risks has either been to have your IT team scramble when it occurs, or to build an extensive on-site environment - both costly, and ineffective methods. Through a managed cloud provider, you can gain the benefits of the on-premise infrastructure without having to expend your own employee resources to handle issues as they arise.
Alternatively, you need your infrastructure operating at 100% to always maintain optimal performance for maximum productivity. By utilizing a corporate cloud solution, this can be guaranteed by cloud service providers like Wowrack who ensure specific performance standards through service agreements.
Featured Case Study: Global Harvest
With over 250 employees, and 6 production facilities across the US, shipping hundreds of millions of pounds of bird seeds via truck and train freight, supporting 140+ different products, having critical systems functioning any less than 100% of the time is unacceptable.
Wowrack helped Global Harvest establish a highly-available private cloud managed infrastructure that allows for a data compression rate of nearly 50% along with helping reduce their workload by Wowrack assuming responsibility of all infrastructure related tasks.
Effective ERP Extending to Corporate Cloud
An important aspect of all businesses is how they manage their employees throughout multiple functions across different departments. By utilizing cloud computing measures, a lot of these tasks can be automated for increased productivity and automation opportunities.
The unique business model of cloud computing typically allows for a pay-as-you-go service, meaning that you do not have to spend more than you will need to use to maintain your day-to-day IT operations. This relates specifically to personnel management by maintaining up-to-date, accurate workflows and dashboards that ensure efficient communication and task management, while segmenting departments’ organizational needs.
An important aspect of utilizing a managed cloud provider is the importance of managed security and compliance. By partnering with a team like Wowrack, you can ensure that your specifications are met in a secure and monitored environment. Not only do you benefit from that added layer of security, but by knowing your company, they can recommend solutions such as private cloud or hybrid cloud to best fit your security needs in order to maintain the necessary level of control of information. While a managed cloud service provider is great to have in place when disaster strikes, it is equally important to have that support when structuring your environment to ensure compliance and strict security measures every single day.
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Whether utilizing cloud-based services is a new venture for your manufacturing company, or you are looking to optimize your usage of the platform, Wowrack’s team is able to work directly with you to ensure a customized solution that can directly address your company’s pain points. As a hybrid cloud provider, we handle any and all needs relating to a custom manufacturing cloud infrastructure for your company. Contact us today for a free estimate or to discuss further how we can assist you!
