Why is the control panel so important?
When businesses consider cloud services, they often focus on productivity and user experience. But the control panel should be a key decision factor. From integration headaches to security nightmares, here's why the control panel should be an integral part of your decision.
No integration between services
When a company buys cloud services from different vendors, there’s no guarantee that those services will integrate with one another. When services are siloed, IT staff wastes time copying information from one app to the next, increasing the likelihood for errors.
Locations can't be centrally managed
Many different services means many different control consoles that IT staff have to manage – provisioning and deprovisioning users, setting up mobile devices, and organizing data in each console separately. Instead of spending time on more strategic initiatives, IT staff are managing cloud services.
Many processes to learn
With many different services for many different providers, users and IT staff have to learn the ins and outs of working in each one. Different provisioning processes and different reporting mechanisms challenge IT admins while multiple login credentials confuse users.
Too many support phone numbers
Each cloud provider has its own support service, its own help procedures and its own way of handling customer support. IT admins will need to deal with all of them when trying to get help with issue.
Overburdened IT admins
Every additional cloud service provider that a company buys from compounds the effort required by IT admins to manage everything. Multiple vendors mean multiple processes, multiple invoices and multiple control panels. Rather than worker to further a company’s business objectives, IT is forced to waste time managing cloud services.
Patchy security across services
Each cloud provider has its own idea of what security means for it’s services, what uptime SLAs it’s willing to support and what it’s willing to do to protect customer data. When a company is working with a lot of different vendors details can slip through the cracks, putting company data at risk. In addition, every control panel should include a two-factor authentication as an extra layer of security during login.
