Top 16 Reasons Why You Need Managed IT Services
After you have owned your own business for a while, you've probably done everything from answering the phones to hiring a GM, and you can reasonably claim to know your firm inside and out. In case there's any action you can't personally undertake, one of your coworkers probably can. There're, however, exceptions to this rule. Highly technical matters of information technology are usually best handled by managed IT services. Having access to IT expertise is crucial to help your business grow as rapidly and efficiently as possible. Unsure if these services are right for your business? Let's take a look at the essence of IT managed services and what their overall benefits are.What are Managed IT Services?
They enable businesses to entrust their IT operations to an expert third-party organization that excels in handling these responsibilities. These third-party companies, known as managed service providers (MSPs), are responsible for the entirety or portions of a business’ IT ecosystems, as agreed upon in an SLA (service level agreement). IT gear is typically purchased by the client, and depending on the SLA, dedicated IT companies may offer round-the-clock monitoring, issue resolution, and more. According to the service level management, IT managed service providers charge a flat fee for delivery of their services over a set time.
The SLA defines precisely what services will be furnished and the level they’ll be offered, along with metrics for measuring the success of these services.
Cloud computing allows these services to expand beyond the areas and borders that would limit the average break/fix IT by the adoption of SaaS (software as a service) technologies, IaaS (infrastructure as a service), and PaaS (platform as a service) also.
These capabilities let managed IT services to scale at a rate significantly larger and quicker than break/fix providers or in-house IT operation.
Why You Need a Managed Service Provider?
Managed services are a practice of outsourcing everyday management responsibilities to enhance operations and cut costs. IT managed service companies let you delegate particular IT operations to them, where they’d be responsible for monitoring, managing, and/or problem-solving for your IT systems.More specifically, MSPs offer:
- Managed networks and Infrastructure - It eliminates the cost of owning and operating a data center. Instead, you can use an MSP provider and contract an SLA with them. This includes managed hosting, managed storage backup, LANs, and WANs;
- Managed security - It permits for remote protection within your organization, including but not limited to, malware, anti-virus, ransomware, etc. Enabling these apps to be done remote allows upgrades to happen seamless and on-time;
- Managed communication services - It merges data, voice, and video services on the same IP network. This service also means using a managed call center;
- Managed wireless/mobile computing - Gives your business wireless capabilities without having to endure the cost and incorporation within your organization;
- Managed print services – This service enables remote monitoring, updating, and management of your business’s document management infrastructure.
- Managed support services - This involves traditional help desk responsibilities, including support tickets for help with IT, issues among employees, and network equipment.
- Data analytics - The next wave in business intelligence is capturing and analyzing data that reveal trends and patterns for customers, so they can take appropriate steps to further their business aims;
- Managed cloud infrastructure - This is where the MSP managed service provider maintains your company’s computing, storage, network, and OS’s. It also brings managing the tools and app stacks (databases, e-commerce platform, and DevOps tools) that run on top of the infrastructure;
- Managed SaaS - The provider hosts and delivers the app to the client and ensures that it’s continuously updated and improved.
Chief 5 Reasons to Hire MSP
While managed services aren’t an all-exclusive solution, they do provide a laser-focused option to many business challenges faced by companies of all sizes, such as:- Hardware costs: Robust technology systems are quite expensive to buy - with no guarantees they won’t be outdated within two years;
- Specialized technologies: Traditionally, organizations could hire a handful of IT staff to build, manage, and troubleshoot issues across the entire IT enterprise. Now, to ensure high performance and availability, IT teams are developed for each tech function (ex. data center, security, etc.);
- Cost of qualified personnel: IT personnel are in high demand and salary too;
- Lack of skilled staff: Even if you have an IT team, do you have enough? Are the personnel you have entirely up to their ears with maintenance;
- Cost of constant maintenance: If undisturbed by maintenance, your IT team members could concentrate on business-enhancing projects like updating your CRM or developing new lead.
Benefits
Here’re the top 11 advantages of managed services when you outsource your IT needs: 1. Minimize risk - Every investment your company makes carries a certain risk. Government regulations, technologies, markets, financial conditions, and markets all change at a fast pace. When you hire an outsourcing provider, it manages a lot of this risk for you, thanks to its industry knowledge in niches like compliance and security issues. 2. Take-charge solutions - When you outsource your IT as a proactive effort, you receive better performance, nearly zero-downtime and fewer glitches. Provider identifies these issues to prevent them from becoming worse and turn into costly repairs and increased downtime. 3. Controlled/predictable spending - One of managed services benefits is the delivery of customized solutions for every customer. It helps prevent worrying of the services that are covered and work with you on pricing models. 4. Level the playing field - Larger enterprises typically have in-house support services with a team of full-time IT gurus. SMBs can’t afford that luxury. One of the strengths of managed IT services is that outsourcing gains the expertise and the insight that larger businesses have. It’ll level the playing field between you and your rivals. 5. Compliance and security - When you outsource to an MSP that is familiar with PCI compliance standards, you reduce the risk related to credit card numbers, customer data, or any other sensitive info. MSPs apply security strategies to keep your firewall, and your DMZ (demilitarized zone) is up-to-date, among other security measures.
6. Lower costs - The ultimate pros of managed services is its ability to lower business costs. One of the costs that organizations don’t always remember is that MSPs minimizes the chance of expensive network disasters.
7. Access to IT experts - An MSP is essentially an in-house IT staff member but without the associated cost. When you work with MSPs, you have access to their knowledgeable personnel that’s available at your convenience for any IT issue or question you have.
8. Vendor management – Providers deal with the hardware and software retailers, so you don’t need to deal with complicated and technical conversations.
9. Up to date technology - The main benefit of managed services is how quickly new technology can be implemented into your company. These services are able to begin projects instantly, saving you time and money.
10. Quicker response time - When you work with managed IT services, you receive the fastest response time support. Providers can repair most network problems that your company may have from their network operations center.
11. Stay focused on business - When you have limited resources, it restricts the time and attention of every manager. A significant managed services advantage is helping you stay focused on your company needs and let these services deal with the complex IT tasks.
How Much It Costs?
The most significant factors in determining their prices is the kind of services provided and the grade of involvement needed from your dedicated IT support team. An externally-managed and fully-integrated IT support will cost more in flat-fees than just monitoring services, but you don't need to worry about paying more in variable extra charges. And you're also getting way more – you mostly get an entire IT department! The complexity of your infrastructure is also a consideration for managed IT services pricing. The presence of technology devices and systems help managed services providers define how complex your business IT system is and price their services accordingly.
Generally, the pricing range runs from $100 per month to $300 by a user, per month.
The term, “by user” refers to employees who utilize technology to do their task – that is, if you have 20 employees who use IT devices for work, be it computers, laptops, or tablets, you’ll pay for 20 users.
