You’ve heard about managed IT services, and perhaps you’re skeptical. Your business’s computers are reliable, and your needs aren’t too complicated. You may think outside IT management is more than you need. Today’s computing world is a complex one, though, and not having expert management can be an expensive mistake. In the long run, keeping your systems working cleanly and efficiently saves money. It may well prevent a situation that would wipe out your business.
Let’s look at some reasons why managed services are the smarter and more cost-effective choice.
Office networks are complicated.
An office’s computer network isn’t just the machines that sit in the office. It typically includes cloud services, remote logins, Wi-Fi access points, VoIP phones, or mobile devices. Employees may use their own phones. Each of these locations could be a weakness in the network. Malware or a leaked password could give an outsider access to servers.
A carelessly configured network won’t run efficiently. It could have bottlenecks and IP address conflicts. High-priority traffic might not get the bandwidth it needs.
A managed service will configure your network for effective and secure operation. Once the network is set up, the service will track all its devices to make sure it stays efficient. Any seriously unusual traffic will trigger an alert.
Malware is growing more dangerous.
The people who create malware are a clever bunch, and they operate it like a business. Small-time criminals without technical expertise can hire services over the Internet to launch ransomware and phishing attacks. Ransomware can wipe out a business’s files. Every network connected to the Internet is constantly being probed. Every known email address is the target of email with dangerous attachments or links.
Fixing malware after the fact is expensive. It causes downtime and can create a data leak. It may silently run as botnet software, launching attacks on other networks. This will lead to blacklisting of your IP address.
A managed service provider will recommend and install security software, provide spam filtering, and block or limit access to vulnerable ports. If any malware does get through, the service will detect and get rid of it before it can do too much damage.
Downtime is expensive.
The cost of the “break-fix” approach isn’t just what you pay for the repair. The bigger cost is the downtime until the problem is fixed. That impacts employee productivity, as well as access by customers and partners. A website which is down or isn’t being updated hurts a business’s reputation. Downtime can lose both existing customers and new prospects.
A preventive approach stops many problems from happening. It catches other problems and fixes them before they have an obvious impact. It makes sure all important systems are backed up, allowing easy restoration and quick recovery if one of them does go down.
Disasters can happen.
A physical disaster, such as a flood or fire, can bring a business’s computers down until they’re replaced. It may not be possible to recover essential business data. When this happens, many businesses fail permanently. An on-site backup is generally useless in this type of situation. Even if the backup survives, there’s more to restoring systems than copying the files to a new computer.
Managed IT services can provide a disaster recovery plan to get systems back online. Data loss will be kept to a minimum or avoided completely. Setting up failover systems can keep a company’s services online with hardly any lost time.
Are Managed IT Services Too Expensive?
A managed IT service does a lot more than fix broken systems. It increases system reliability, prevents problems from happening, makes networks run more efficiently, and reduces downtime. How can you afford not to have that?