Many businesses rely on their in-house IT teams for all their IT needs. While this is an adequate way of handling your IT needs, many businesses are
Many businesses rely on their in-house IT teams for all their IT needs. While this is an adequate way of handling your IT needs, many businesses are moving away from it. Technology is changing so fast and gone are the days when an IT professional could set it and leave it, or wait for it to break and then fix it.
With businesses increasingly relying on software and cloud services to handle many of their business operations, they can no longer afford to gamble with their IT infrastructure. Also, it is becoming increasingly harder for a single IT team to keep up with the pace of technological innovations and change. Businesses that want utmost reliability and a team that will be there as soon as they call are turning to managed IT services. We will look at why this is happening and explore some reasons why your business should also follow suit.
Why Businesses Are Turning to Managed IT Services
Business owners want things to go as smoothly as possible. Getting managed IT services ensures that they don’t have to hire an in-house IT team. By doing this, they know they immediately have a dedicated team standing by to help them with any IT needs like downtime, patches and software updates.
Maintaining a robust IT infrastructure is also very expensive. By outsourcing IT management, businesses can save quite a bit of money. Lastly, managed IT services help businesses stay competitive by reducing downtime which increases productivity.
By Turning to Managed IT Services, Businesses Can Focus on Their Core Objectives
Your IT needs will grow as your business does. As this happens, there will be an increased workload on your IT team, and they might find themselves overwhelmed. This might force you to assign additional employees to the IT team which distracts from your objectives
Managed IT frees up your employees to focus on the tasks and responsibilities they were hired for. Once a business does this, it only needs to hire additional IT staff when dire need arises.
Reduced Infrastructure Costs
If you are running a small business, your IT infrastructure costs might be relatively small. As your business grows, things are unlikely to stay this way. Instead of adding additional servers, which are expensive to buy and maintain, you could downsize and let an IT company give you access to their infrastructure. By doing this, you save on hardware, the space it would need to be housed, and the energy it would use.
Also, you could see savings on training, licensing and consultation. All these services will be covered under one umbrella and a simple, single monthly payment.
Get Access to Experts
As technology changes, it gives rise to new problems. Your IT team might not know about the latest changes in server software or hardware optimizations, so you might need to bring in someone who can help you out. Some businesses also need someone to support their business operation like setting up new cloud platforms. This could be a problem if you only have one person in your IT department.
Both of these problems could be solved by hiring new employees which is expensive in terms of hiring and training the new employees. Instead of going through all this, you could outsource to a managed IT company. They can give you access to a whole team of IT professionals with some companies even allowing you to customize your team. They let you add or remove specialists who you do not want on the team while allowing you to have a team that is as large or as small as you want.
Receive Support Whenever You Need It
IT systems can break down or stop working at any time. When this happens, your systems will be unavailable and things could get worse if this happens in the middle of the night. When you hire a reliable IT company Kansas City, such as KansascityIT.com, you do not have to worry about unavailability because they offer 24/7 support any day of the year. Just know that some options like weekend support might cost extra.
If you run a global business, try to find a partner who offers their services in different time zones. This way, any of your global offices and locations can get help whenever they need it.
Predictable Monthly Costs
Once you outline your needs and chart a growth plan, the managed IT company you choose will tell you how much it will cost you monthly. This means you always know what it will cost and the exact services you get for what you pay.
Simpler Scalability
Businesses that hire seasonally might need more infrastructure during their peak season and less of it during their low seasons. If you decide to invest in in-house IT infrastructure, you might have a hard time scaling up when you need additional capacity and scaling down when you do not need it to save costs.
A managed IT services lets you scale up and down when you need to and downsize when you have fewer employees. You also get to do this without incurring any extra infrastructure costs. This type of scalability also applies to software. Some software requires additional computational power or space. When using them, you can ask the IT company to give you additional capacity. After you are done, you can ask them to scale back your capacity to what it originally was.
Security
Cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important as more breaches happen and massive amounts of confidential data are leaked online. Many managed IT companies have security packages as part of their services. They handle patches, upgrades and fixing vulnerabilities they find in the infrastructure. They also help train your employees on the best security practices so they are better able to avoid any threats aimed at them and your business.
Easy Migration to the Cloud
Cloud-based platforms are emerging as the best way of managing your business, its software, data and processes. A competent IT company should be able to help you make the transition so you can take advantage of the benefits the cloud affords your business.
Every business that wants reliability and optimized IT services should switch to managed IT services. These services guarantee accessibility, reliability and scalability of services for businesses that need them.
