We could talk about the benefits of managed IT services all day, every day. Managed IT services is also referred to as outsourced IT or remote network management. Letting an expert team remotely monitor and manage your IT infrastructure for you is, in fact, a huge win for your business and your staff. Today we want to focus on five major advantages you gain when you have managed IT services.
#1 You can control technology costs much better
Managed IT services use the recurring services model where you pay a set, predictable monthly cost. You know exactly what you’re going to pay, which helps you plan and stay within your budget. Your costs may fluctuate if you add users or devices to your managed services contract, but this is also predictable!
On top of knowing what your bill is going to be each time, proactive monitoring and management helps catch small IT problems before they become big expensive problems. This can reduce your risk and unforeseen technology expenses.
#2 You get trained, experienced, certified experts
Don’t have an IT department or multiple certified technicians? Managed services can give you access to a whole pool of certified, specialized technicians, who are there when you need them. You don’t need to worry about vetting, hiring, and training your own IT experts for every single skillset that you might need.
Your managed services provider is responsible for providing expertise and keeping qualifications, skills, and certifications up to date. You don’t have to worry about these things, while still benefiting from them!
#3 You can increase your efficiency
With IT problems taken off your plate, you can devote more of your time and staff resources to your business. Outsourcing IT means you reduce your own time spent on technology research, development, and implementation. Time spent on those issues reduces your efficiency in other areas, like running your business and performing your actual job duties. So managed IT services gives you your time back – which improves your efficiency and productivity.
#4 Managed IT services help improve your IT health
Over time, managed services can help straighten out your technology infrastructure. Many managed IT service contracts have baseline requirements for the age of your hardware, for example. This usually means that a technology lifecycle plan is implemented at the same time, to update existing hardware when beginning managed services and then to keep all hardware and software up to date in the future so nothing falls behind. (We see this scenario regularly with clients – check out our success stories for more!)
And once again, outsourced management means your infrastructure stays fully monitored so that pesky problems don’t snowball into massive issues that could have crippled your infrastructure before. Overall, your infrastructure stays in healthier shape because small problems are dealt with quickly and big problems are avoided.
With managed services, you also receive reporting on the status of your IT. You’ll regularly know the effectiveness and health of your firewall, network switches, servers, desktops, and so on. This information gives you a more complete look at your infrastructure: what you have, how it’s working, and what you need. Therefore, you can make well-informed decisions about how to expand or consolidate your infrastructure in the future. Less guesswork, more tech that actually works for you!
#5 You don’t have to handle cybersecurity on your own
Cybersecurity isn’t just a buzzword: it’s one of the most critical issues that businesses face today. Sometimes it seems like a monumental project to tackle.
Managed services can provide you with basic and more advanced security methods to reduce your risk and improve your defense against cyber threats. For example, basic managed services for monitoring and managing servers and desktops should include anti-virus, anti-malware, and anti-spam services. These are absolutely essential cybersecurity tools. Other managed services, like managed firewall, network security monitoring, and managed backup, are also essential in monitoring traffic into and out of your network, finding malicious activity within your network, and then routinely backing up, storing, and restoring your data.
These are all core cybersecurity tools, and you don’t have to worry about implementing or managing them by yourself with managed services! That’s a little less worry at night… or on the job.
There are many more benefits of outsourcing your IT management, but the OXEN team has seen these top five repeatedly over the years. Managed services can help you get your IT expenses under control, give you the IT expertise you need, increase your efficiency, improve your technology’s health, and point your cybersecurity defense in the right direction.
If you think remote management and monitoring of your IT infrastructure might be right for you, check out OXEN Technology’s suite of solutions that can give you full coverage!
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