Technology and threats to it are advancing and expanding. For this reason, businesses need better protection and security. While some business owners think they have secured software and reliable in-house IT solutions, it may not be enough. Your data would be more secure with managed IT services. This especially benefits those businesses that don’t have an IT department. These services have an experienced and trained team of experts who can recognize potential issues and decrease the risks before they occur. Read on to learn more about why hiring a managed IT service can help and benefit your business.
What Are Managed IT Services and Why Use Them?
With advanced technology comes a little less security, and it’s hard to know if you’re “secure enough” to protect your business. But some solutions can minimize the risks. Those solutions are managed service providers (MSPs), specifically managed IT services. With this type of MSP, you would outsource IT-related tasks and monitoring to a third-party service, relieving you of the burden of maintaining IT services and equipment with in-house staff.
Understanding MSPs
In the ‘90s, IT solutions only referred to fixing what was malfunctioning and broken. Since then, IT services have progressed and expanded. Now you can rely on them to take a proactive approach and determine and fix issues before they appear. Depending on the agreement and contract with a business, an MSP can be proactive or act when deemed necessary. It’s important to add that the MSP decides when action is needed, not the client.
The Importance of a Service Level Agreement (SLA)
The company and the MSP determine the provider’s tasks by signing an SLA. These terms and conditions identify the tasks the MSP will be responsible for and how to measure successful delivery. The actual services a provider offers may vary, but some features you may expect include:
- IT tasks and solutions
- Desk and technical assistance
- Network monitoring
- System administration
- Server management
- Disaster recovery
- Data backup
Clients usually pay a monthly fee or subscription for these managed IT services.
Increased Need for Managed IT Services
Managed IT services are becoming increasingly popular, and most businesses rely on them. In 2021, the market value of managed services was around $160 billion and is estimated to reach and even exceed a whopping $300 billion by 2027.
As more companies rely upon these services’ expertise, finding a reliable managed service provider will become increasingly essential. Quite a few are on the market, but not all will deliver quality service.
Benefits of Managed IT Services
Some businesses still claim they don’t need MSPs and managed IT services. The frequent arguments from various companies are that MSPs are expensive or that the in-house IT department works fine. However, the benefits MSPs bring to the table are worth considering. Let’s dive in and see the advantages of hiring an MSP.
Managing Overwhelming Tasks
Many businesses can’t deal with the rise of IT issues in their everyday operations, while others don’t have a team of experts skilled or experienced enough to deal with complex IT problems. This is one of the reasons why hiring managed IT services can be beneficial.
Increasing Efficiency and Productivity
With managed IT services, your employees can focus on their tasks while the IT solutions are left for the MSP to resolve. At the same time, this helps streamline IT operations in the company and directs in-house staff toward its core objective, further saving time and increasing productivity.
Network Monitoring and Protection
Managed IT services are available anytime (often in different time zones) to monitor your IT infrastructure day and night. Unlike in-house staff, these professionals will ensure that someone always watches for threats – there’s no such thing as “off the clock.”
If an issue arises, your managed IT service can respond in real time rather than waiting for an IT department to find a solution during work hours. This decreases the risk of interruptions if something malfunctions and prevents the business from losing money. Depending on the size of the business, it can lose up to $20,000 during downtime.
Furthermore, most managed IT services offer network protection, including creating failsafes to protect the data and system from breaches and intrusions.
Access to an Experienced and Reliable Team
When you hire an MSP, you get a reliable team of experts ready to deal with every challenging IT task you require of them.
Since managed IT services have their own specialists, you won’t have to spend money on training your employees to deal with complex issues. Instead, you can take advantage of this team’s experience, knowing they’ve probably seen the issue before and know what to do to fix it.
Cost-Effective Solution
Hiring managed IT services costs much less than hiring and training new IT talent. But apart from that, you hire MSP to enhance the IT structure and how a business operates, creating a more efficient work environment. This saves money you would otherwise spend on fixing frequent issues in a reactive IT structure.
It’s more expensive not to hire managed IT services and deal with issues before they create significant damage than work with underqualified employees.
Moreover, many managed IT services can grow with you. When you scale your company, you can negotiate for more assistance. Conversely, if you want to cut back on some services, you can come to an agreement about that, too. Using a third-party provider ensures that you only pay for what you need.
Protect Your Business With an MSP
Keeping a dedicated IT department in-house is costly and can reduce productivity and efficiency in the workplace. So, why incur the extra expense of hiring and training an entire department when you can outsource your IT needs to an experienced and professional MSP? Take the guesswork out of cybersecurity and data protection with a managed IT service that specializes in protecting a company’s assets.
When you’re ready to hand off this crucial role to a professional team, contact Metro Sales. We provide the best and most reliable IT solutions for companies in Burnsville, Twin Cities, Fargo, Duluth, and the St. Cloud area.