Insider’s guide to credit union hosted servers

We are continuing our series on the components of building your credit union cloud with today’s post on credit union hosted servers. In our first post on this topic, “Five Steps to Build Your Credit Union Cloud” we outlined a very deliberate and strategic path to move your credit union to the cloud. We explained how managed services are giving credit unions a new competitive advantage over those struggling to meet the increasing demands of operating complex IT infrastructures. The five steps were:

1. Move to managed telecom
2. Move to managed security (integrated locally and off site)
3. Move to managed disaster recovery (DRaaS)
4. Move to hosted servers
5. Move to service bureau (core)

Move to Hosted Servers

Ah, where to start with the concept of credit union hosted servers? In my previous life as a VP/IT at a credit union, I think we were up to somewhere around 80 or so different servers (physical!) at some point – can you imagine the patching, managing, and security oversight that took. To give you an idea of the lopsidedness that happens with resources when your infrastructure explodes like that, out of a 12-person team, only two were dedicated to the core. Crazy, huh? Smart CIOs are starting to capitalize on hosted technologies to better align their teams with the credit union’s strategic goals. Is a managed/hosted server architecture right for your credit union? Let’s break it down.

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