Businesses of all sizes prioritise operational efficiency, however, not all organisations are equally equipped to maintain this efficiency. Small businesses sometimes have limited IT resources, allowing them to quickly fall behind in updates and network management, which places the company’s system at risk of a breach or outage. For many small and medium businesses in Perth, the solution is a managed IT service provider.
Research published by IDC predicts a managed IT services provider market growth rate of 3.8% through to 2023, which is a marginal increase in its previous prediction of 3.7% growth to 2022.
“The execution of a digital strategy is critical in helping the organisation achieve its business transformation and to compete in the digital economy. IT service providers are increasingly taking on the role of a business consultant by leveraging their IT consulting pedigree,” IDC stated in its report.
Are you unsure if outsourcing your IT services is right for your business? Let’s take a look at the meaning of managed IT services and how they differ from other solutions.
What is a Managed IT Service?
Essentially, a managed IT service involves delegating IT operations to a third-party provider who is responsible for the planning, management, monitoring and repair of all or some of your applications. This approach to technical support differs greatly from the traditional break/ fix solution. One of the main differences between a managed IT services provider and traditional IT support is that it’s considered “always-on”. Coverage options are scalable and available to suit different business needs from regular business hours to 24/7.
These days, it’s not only large companies that need technology to compete in their respective markets. Reliance on IT is growing, so efforts to increase IT support within small businesses should be moving at the same rate. To keep companies from being overwhelmed due to limited IT resources, managed IT service providers are able to identify threats and fix potential issues as warning signs arise.
Therefore, a managed IT services provider will offer Information and Communication Technology services solutions providing 24/7 IT support, IT security, cloud computing, disaster recovery and data backup using and integrating the most performant IT managed solutions available on the market from world-leading technology suppliers.
What is Traditional IT Support?
Traditional IT support can be outsourced or offered in-house. This type of support is most commonly known as “break/fix” support and is depicted that way due to the reactive nature of the solution. When an issue arises, the user notifies the help desk and waits for the problem to be fixed. This could mean waiting until the IT support group is back in the office as they typically offer services only during standard business hours.
In the past, this was only one way to deal with technical difficulties. If a desktop or server stopped operating effectively, the only approach would be calling a professional and scrambling to find a solution as quickly as possible. In today’s business climate and with rising cybersecurity threats, this has become not enough. Just using pay-as-you-go software, hardware, networking, servers and any other one-time services has become too risky and inefficient. Business’s increasing dependence on digital databases and automated systems means that outages can have a profoundly negative effect on business operations. When networks have outages or email servers are inaccessible for periods of time, the loss in revenue and productivity can be devastating. Due to this increase in risk, security and support to prevent failure and to realise potential issues before they arise is critical. This is the gap that managed IT services companies fill.
Speak with an IT expert today
With the right managed IT strategy you can improve productivity and ROI for your IT system costing you less and putting your IT worries aside. If you want to talk with an IT expert, please fill out our form or give us a call at (08) 6245 2800 and get started.