When digital agencies need IaaS

    Large digital agencies are, as a rule, companies with a large number of departments and areas: here is web development, production, marketing and PR. Companies are forced to provide more and more services and develop a technological “base” —the IaaS provider can help them with this.

    We talk about how cloud infrastructure allows the agency to worry less about long-term planning and to spend more energy and resources on specialized projects.


    / Wikimedia / Smallworldsocial / CC

    When a customer needs not a product, but a collaboration tool


    Customers need a quick result. Sometimes, to achieve it, it is not enough to select additional specialists — you need to promptly connect the clients themselves to work together and give them a technical platform for the implementation of the plan. Hogarth Worldwide, for example, has developed a platform that allows customers to centrally launch and manage thousands of small sites for different countries and advertising campaigns.

    Together, the agency and the client can do more and achieve results faster - but this is fraught with increased stress on the agency's infrastructure. Returning to the example of Hogarth Worldwide, one of the first customers underestimated the popularity of their new product, and in the very first day, 1.5 million people flooded the network of its sites instead of the expected 150 thousand users. The platform withstood the load, as it was located in the "cloud".

    The durability of the virtual infrastructure is due to the fact that providers pay great attention to load sharing.. Even a sharp increase in traffic will not fail. This property of virtualization allows you to experiment with new tools and conduct multi-channel advertising campaigns, without fear of a sharp "fall." In 1cloud, for example, you can monitor the status of servers through the control panel - this allows you to take action in time with a sharp increase in load (in addition, monitoring service is available in 1cloud - it can be used to monitor the availability of a server or domain over the network).

    When the agency is difficult to plan in advance load


    A useful skill for an agency is the ability to clearly assess the capacity (including technical) that will be required for a particular project. This is especially important if the client product (as in the case from the previous section) is located on the infrastructure of the agency.

    For example, due to the growth of traffic during the advertising campaigns, the site and the application may “fall” - in this case, the effect of the promotion will tend to zero. To prevent this situation from catching the agency by surprise, IaaS-providers offer convenient tools for power management - you can connect and disconnect virtual machines as needed.

    In addition, upon completion of the project, the agency will not have to think about what to do with the extra servers. Oleg Bykov, one of the users of 1cloud service, has been promoting websites for more than 5 years and uses cloud infrastructure for this. He tells :

    “Most ways to drive traffic can be automated through the use of scripts or specialized programs. It is usually required that they work around the clock. Running them on a computer in the office can be irrational for many reasons. This is where cloud VPS servers come to the rescue. After the initial setup, they can automatically work as long as necessary.

    At first, I used my traveling laptop with which I travel. But over time, it was just not enough. Yes, and keep it on during frequent trips is quite difficult. Therefore, I have been using dedicated servers for a long time. I emphasize that this is not about “iron” servers, but about virtual ones working in the clouds.

    If I don’t need a server now, then I just turn it off in the control panel. And when I need it, I'll turn it on. In this case, all the programs installed in it will be saved. Inside the operating system, you can configure them to start automatically. "

    When customer data must be protected


    Reputation is perhaps one of the most important assets of a digital agency. It is easy to lose, and the reminder of failure is almost impossible to erase from the memory of customers. Especially if it is regularly reminded of it in the style of " 10 major digital files of the year ."

    One of the threats to reputation is cyber attack. Last summer, the world's largest network of ad agencies WPP fell victim to the Petya encryption virus. The attack knocked out some systems of the corporation and cost it more than $ 20 million excluding insurance claims. Martin Sorrell (Martin Sorrell), ex-head of WPP, later announced that the company will invest an additional $ 13 million a year to prevent such disasters in the future.

    It is worth noting that while the work of the agency is paralyzed, it loses not only money, but also the trust of clients. Of course, virtual infrastructure is also subject to attacks. However, providers are responsible to customers for the safety of their data, and the cost of such attacks for attackers is only growing .

    Despite this, providers are increasingly paying attention to security issues. And we are talking about protection not only on the virtual, but also on the physical level - the servers are reliably protected by a multi-level security system. For example, the St. Petersburg and Moscow Data Centers, which are used by 1cloud, have five security perimeters with surveillance cameras and access control systems.


    / Flickr / Not4rthur / CC

    Cloud providers have reliable solutions for problems with information loss (in cases where attackers have nothing to do with it) - backups and snapshots . If necessary, backups are created automatically, and data can be restored at the request of the client.

    When it is important to save funds for the development of your own product


    The first item of expenses that virtual infrastructure eliminates is the investment in your own hardware — you only pay for what you use right now, without the need for long-term investments that may not pay off.

    Savings also apply to staff costs. IaaS-providers have a whole staff of engineers who solve all infrastructure tasks, so that the agency’s employees can do their main business.

    The saved resources can be directed to the development of your own project - many digital agencies follow this path. For example, the popular British agency Cyber-Duck developed its own application UX Companion - a dictionary on the subject of UX, which allowed them to stand out from the competition and “bleed” the core skills of employees.

    IaaS does not only allow the project to save resources for creating a branded product - in a cloudy environment, you can test the final product, check different usage scenarios (the same traffic jumps) and not be afraid that the application works correctly only on the computers of the developers themselves. As a result, the agency has not just another client in the portfolio, but also its own product.



    PS Another IaaS-provider helps freelancers and 1C franchisee to work .

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