The digital economy has businesses and organizations struggling to find ways to become more agile. More often than not, they are spending most of their time and energy maintaining their infrastructure instead of trying to find ways to work with the business to get ahead of the competition and use IT to their advantage. The mantra has been “do more with less” for a long time. This means less staff and less money to invest in new technologies, resulting in a less than optimal IT environment given the pace at which business flows today. The challenges to keep applications available as well as users and customers happy are daunting.
IT can be a complex thing, and it’s not getting any easier. Skill sets required to manage today’s business applications have become very specialized and expensive. Its no wonder many organizations have sought out alternatives to managing and investing in their own data center. As competition increases and companies are under more pressure to become more agile, IT has become an target for outsourcing, with the goal of increasing corporate efficiency and finding a partner who can help increase revenues from IT investments.
Let’s look at the major reasons organizations are turning to managed service providers to assist them with their IT requirements:
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Reducing and controlling operating costs: The demonstrated cost savings of outsourcing are widely accepted as one of the reasons to consider managed services. The reduction of CapEx and OpEx is also key, as outsourcing removes the need to purchase physical hardware as well as the maintenance costs.
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Gaining access to world-class capabilities around the clock: Outsourced IT specializes in managing and maintaining your IT needs and can service those needs 24/7 while going beyond what an internal team can do.
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Freeing internal resources: Your business probably isn’t IT, so maintenance tasks get in the way of more strategic projects. Managed services can help alleviate this burden and help maximize your IT team’s time.
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Latest technology: With all the different technologies like cloud, security, and networking, you have access to the best in the field, along with the latest and greatest technology to give your company the edge it needs to compete in a crowded marketplace.
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Streamlining or increasing efficiency: Using an MSP partner to augment your in-house IT staff can be a great way to increase efficiency of your business operations. No matter what arises, an MSP is there to pick up the slack when needed, allowing your business to run smoothly and your employees to focus on core business needs.
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Shared risk: MSPs heavily invest in the most resilient systems that handle disruption better than less powerful systems can. Backed by robust SLAs, MSP partners guarantee the safety of your data in ways an on-premises solution cannot.
Managed Services Can Help You Grow
It’s not too far of a reach to assume that most IT organizations are overwhelmed with trying to keep up with new business initiatives while keeping the existing infrastructure and applications up and running. The other dynamic is that as technology has changed – cloud computing, mobility, and big data analytics – just to name a few, there are fewer IT members on staff who are skilled in these areas. It only makes sense to think about outsourcing the management and deployment of these new technologies to achieve faster time to value. Managed services can provide the bridge between existing infrastructure and newer technology that enables organizations to achieve maximum business value and focus on core competencies.
Next time we will look at things to consider when selecting a managed service provider.
Interested in learning more? Give us a call: 847-637-4300