Why Most Businesses are Outsourcing to Managed Service Providers?
The growing popularity of Managed Service Providers can be attributed to the increasing number of businesses who are now outsourcing their IT infrastructure needs to providers who are specialized for managing these types of tasks. If, as a business owner, you are contemplating whether or not to outsource to a Managed Service Provider, there are a few points you should consider before moving ahead.
What is Managed Services?
Managed services, in layman’s words, refers to the practice of outsourcing the IT infrastructure including computer networks, Servers, etc. to someone or some provider who is specialized in managing these. In the current saga of IT, all businesses, big and small, need a computer network to remain competitive. However, not all businesses have the desired man power and expertise to manage and maintain their IT infrastructure, which either results in an unoptimized network, or maintaining an inhouse IT department, which comes at a regular seat cost.
This is where Managed Service Providers or MSPs come in. Being experts in the field of IT & Networking, MSPs, therefore naturally brings in value to any business that is hiring them, which otherwise would have been a costly affair.
Following are some of the imminent advantages of handing over to MSPs
Be at the top of things: By outsourcing your IT infrastructure to an expert you would naturally have the advantage of enhanced performance, fewer technical issues, and minimum downtime. All MSPs have the required man-power and monitoring system that would keep a watch over your IT infrastructure, check issues that have a potential to cause harm, mitigate those issues as soon as identified, which not only lets your organization perform uninterrupted, but also helps prevent expensive repairs.
Minimize unexpected expenses on IT Infrastructure: Remember, any IT investment comes with a cost, both running cost, maintenance costs, as well as peripheral costs, not to speak about manpower cost should you maintain an inhouse IT team. Most MSPs provide a monthly cost depending on the extensiveness of your IT infrastructure, which essentially helps streamline the expenditure for any business. In other words, by outsourcing to an MSP, you would only need to pay a defined cost (yearly/monthly) and stop worrying about sudden expenses.
Stay Competitive: Any business is supposed to have competitors. Your competitors might be organizations of similar size or large sized businesses. Bigger organizations would generally have an inhouse team of IT experts, a luxury which small and medium sized businesses cannot afford. By outsourcing to an MSP, both small and medium sized businesses can match their infrastructure with that of the large sized businesses so that they can remain competitive. Importantly, small and medium sized businesses can save on their infrastructure maintenance cost to a good extent and focus on their core competencies.
Adherence to Compliances: Almost all businesses have multiple compliances and regulations to adhere to. Customer information, PCI compliances, GDPR, etc. are few compliances which almost all businesses must take care of. By outsourcing to an MSP actually helps businesses comply with regulations since MSPs, being experts in this arena, do have defined protocols and strategies in place to ensure that your IT infrastructure, security, etc. are always updated for minimization of risk.
Depending on what line of business you are in, these are some points you would definitely need to consider before hiring an MSP. The pace in which IT is evolving requires your IT infrastructure to be updated frequently to keep yourself compliant, which essentially is quite a challenge, especially if you are a small or medium sized business. Outsourcing your IT infrastructure would be a prudent step in such cases since any quality MSP would bring with them years of experience right from the time you hire them, thus not only helping you save money, but time as well.