Technology is the driving force that is transforming the world of business. Most businesses are investing in streamlining their IT functions and operations to make business operations smooth. To achieve this goal, companies are turning to managed IT service providers. This trend has led to the increase in demand for managed services within the business infrastructure as both small, medium and large businesses become aware of their advantages and influence.
What are Managed IT Services?
Businesses delegate their IT operations to a third-party organization that has the expertise and time to handle the responsibilities. In this case, the expert third-party organization is a managed IT services provider, and the services rendered are managed IT services (MSPs). They are responsible for running the entire department of IT systems as agreed upon in a Service Level Agreement. The services may include 24/7 monitoring, issue resolution, reporting, and many more IT-related functions.
Still, on technology, cloud computing has allowed managed IT services to expand beyond the regions and borders that would constrain the average break/fix IT. This has been made possible through the adoption of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technologies, as well as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). These technological advancements have allowed MSPs to expand drastically as compared to in-house IT operations or even break/fix providers.
How Does Managed IT Services Work?
When it comes to information technology solutions, there is no template or a uniform way of finding solutions for all businesses that need managed IT services to meet their goals and grow. For every new client, the managed services provider will do a thorough assessment of the current technical environment to deduce areas of improvement and opportunities to achieve the goals of the company.
With each managed IT service provided, there is a Service Level Agreement that states what is expected. The services provided may include constant ongoing maintenance process, help desk support, security, and transiting, monitoring, and reporting services. The agreement also outlines the parameters with which the MSPs will work. This includes response and communication time, performance goals, security guarantees among other things.
What Do Managed Services Providers (MSPs) Do?
Managed services providers are becoming more of a necessity than an option. This is because as much as the digital era has made many processes and aspects of business, it has brought about more complications like increased security risks.
Managed IT services providers ensure that all your IT systems run smoothly, have the highest security level, and updated while providing day-to-day technical solutions. They focus on remote monitoring, updating, and management of all the services while tracking quality performances and the functionality of each service. This ensures that the business is more focused on the productive areas of the business.
MSPs help business in different ways that may include the following:
Supply Urgent and Essential IT Staff
With MSPs, you will have access to highly knowledgeable, skilled, and experienced IT staff that you will otherwise spend a lot of money and time to hire and onboard to satisfy your IT needs. Compared to acquiring an in-house IT person, managed services providers are characterized by staff who are skilled in the current technologies and aware of the trends.
The staff focus on providing support hours based on the SLA without a fail. Whether you require round-the-clock support, something that can only be achieved with multiple in-house hires and rotating shifts, MSPs can provide it seamlessly. This means that you can use the expertise of skilled service providers at a minimized cost.
Faster Adaptation of the New Technology and Trends
The secret to making your business successful is staying updated on the current shifts and trends in information and technology. However, staying updated on the relevant technologies and running a business is a headache and almost unmanageable. The use of an in-house IT team has several challenges especially when it comes to adopting new, efficient, and relevant technology. This may include a steep learning curve, increased capital costs in the adaptation and establishment of on-premise infrastructure, and increased costs of the migration of projects and assessment of available options.
Managed IT services providers are effective in researching and evaluating hardware and software applications in an attempt to find cost-effective yet valuable solutions for the respective client. In doing this, they reduce more barriers that may have otherwise challenged the adaption of new technologies into the company.
They do this by providing infrastructure as service, managing license agreements, finding the right staff for project migration, training employees about the new technologies. They also provide business intelligence through reporting. This helps in making well-informed decisions that will have a positive value on the growth of the business.
Acting as a Relevant Outsourcing Team for your Day-to-Day IT Management
Think about this, how long will take for you to achieve your goals if your employees focused on the production aspects and strategic projects rather than maintenance? What if you had a team whose focus is to ensure every IT process and function is at its best, how will that affect your company and its performance?
When partnering with managed IT service providers, they bring with them experience, skills, and efficiency in there, sourcing of solutions, service delivery, and general support and reporting. From experience of working with other clients, the MSPs have solid ground when it comes to providing reliable help desk ticketing systems, efficient responses, and monitoring tools that would have otherwise been a costly investment.
Upgraded Security System
For smaller and medium-sized companies that are just picking up, investing in specialized cyber security services can be costly and out of the budget. This does not mean that cybersecurity is not an essential aspect of the business. Cybersecurity teams help in identifying threats, preventing cyber-attacks, and keeping the systems and applications secure.
MSPs are hungry for information. They stay updated on news and information concerning developing cyber threats and ways to combat them. They monitor applications and hardware patch release cycles, antivirus software updates, and upgrade network security configurations to keep your business secure from malware, viruses, and hackers.
Hiring an effective managed IT service provider means decreased attacks which converts to less downtime for your business that leads to increased customer loyalty and a healthy working environment especially for the management team.
Effective Solution for Backup and Disaster Recovery
Having a reliable backup plan for when things go south is a strong point in the business world. An effective MSP specializes in IT backup services, disaster recovery planning, and restores services when most needed. While this may be on the list of things not likely to happen with an effective MSPs team, some unforeseen events that are out of control may swerve the business in that direction.
The experience the team may have in dealing with such disastrous even makes them the team to have on board. They are prepared to fix the mess and get your business back to production.
When Are You Most Likely to Need A Managed IT Service Provider?
The digital ecosystem can be a volatile environment. For instance, imagine losing all your network access in the middle of a regular Monday mid-morning. Or, the computers suddenly get affected by malware that puts the client’s data at risk.
This can cause irreversible damage to your brand that may include losing clients, financial losses, and prolonged downtime. And this is why you need an IT infrastructure and systems that provide around–the–clock services.
Hiring an in-house IT team that will help maintain and streamline operations and processes can be costly, and extremely difficult on the team that has to juggle between tasks. With a strained budget and an overworked IT team, meeting the goals of the business will be a dream that will never be realized. This is where and why companies turn to managed IT service providers.
While managed service providers focus on the management and monitoring of the IT infrastructure and applications to detect possible threats, some situations call for their expertise. Some of the situations include the following:
Increasing and Upgrading IT Capacity
As the business grows and expands, the needs and services diversify with the rapid evolution of technology. This calls for upgrading the computing and storage capacity to accommodate every process, employee, client, and production needs. While being affordable, MSPs are easily scalable on-demand with a customized solution to ensure the adjustments are relevant to the growth.
Protecting against Cyber Threats and Security Breaches
Cybersecurity breaches like malware and virus attacks are not friends. The damage they cause can be the death of your business and any entrepreneurial goals you may have established. In the event of a cybersecurity attack, immediate solutions are required to restore regular operations, recover any lost breached data, and fix the vulnerabilities that caused the breach.
Managed IT services encompass the provision of physical security and application layers through intensive hardware compliances, regular testing and analysis, management of firewalls and remote control centers among other things that protect against cyber threats.
Filling in the Existing IT Skill Gaps
While finding the right IT professionals can be a tedious job because, for the high demand for the services, continuous training of the in-house staff with the evolution of technology is time-consuming and costly.
However, partnering with an effective managed IT service provider can fill this gap because the team has experts who are constantly updating themselves on new technologies.
Finding Effective Solutions Disaster Recovery
Disasters, whether manmade or natural, don’t have warnings or red flags. They just happen. And when they do, they cause a massive distraction to the IT infrastructure which can be hard to fix in absence of an effective team.
A reliable managed service provider usually are armed with effective disaster recovery solutions that can be used when necessary. The plan often includes automatic failover to a secondary data center at different locations with all backed up data to ensure there is no production time wasted in downtime.
Final Thoughts
Working in partnership with a Managed Service Provider carries a whole host of benefits for a business – especially those that want to operate effectively in an increasingly complex talent market. Among the highly-rated managed IT service providers is synergy IT, a team of tech-savvy professionals whose skills, experience, and professionalism in the IT sector continue to be the backbone of many organizations and businesses.
While the business environment is constantly evolving, you need an IT team that you can rely on to make informed decisions for the success of the business.
