The Value of a Managed Service Provider

December 23, 2015

The year 2015 has been fairly great for the IT professionals. The recent research and statistics show that majority of the businesses are currently looking for workers who have specific skills in IT, such as IT support, cloud computing or networking. When we compare this demand from business to the supply of such workers with the required qualities, we can see that an unbalance is evident because of a shortage on the supply side.

Since the supply of qualified people in the field of IT is limited, it has forced the financial compensation of such individuals to increase significantly. Moreover, many people are not able to cope up with the changing technology due to which they are going obsolete.

This does seem like a mini crisis for businesses who are demanding for IT professionals, and in order to come out of this crisis, such businesses have two options. They can either wait for months or keep looking for people to hire in the IT department, or they could simply get hold of a managed service provider.

A recent study by Gartner projected that through 2015, people - not technology, will be responsible for up to 80% of technology failure. This number coincides with findings reported in the IT Process Institute’s Visible Ops Handbook stating that 80% of unexpected outages are due to poorly planned changes implemented by IT staff.

The forecast is even darker for businesses with absolutely no IT support on payroll. These companies have subscribed to the break/fix model of technology management. While this model can sometimes be out of necessity due to budget restraints, it can also stem from a state of ignorance that their business is truly susceptible to technology failure. The overall health and profitability of their business is directly affected by the performance, reliability and security of its technology systems.

Managed IT service providers can prove to be really helpful for businesses because such service providers offer different useful services such as IT support, assistance in help desk, cloud computing and management of the network. The people that these service providers send are also quite professional, so it would be as you have an employee who is outsourced.

Managed service providers also specialize in the domain of security, and these providers have an efficient plan to mitigate all the risks that can affect the security of the business. Through high level security patching on the network, such providers can ensure that the settings are kept critical and up to date for that the infiltrators cannot take advantage of the business. Furthermore, the managed service providers also monitor the system throughout the day and are on the lookout for any suspicious activities.

Several businesses have also hired managed service providers because they just want to be in a comfort zone. Such providers also offer data backup services and have disaster recovery plan in place as well in case an unusual situation emerges and a business ends up losing important data. By having all of the important data protected, and by knowing that contingencies can be dealt with effectively, businesses can operate with freedom without any pressure.