Managed IT Services are duties handled by the third party, often in the context of business IT services. Managed services model is a form to offload general tasks to an expert for the following advantages:
- reduce costs
- improve service quality
- free internal teams to do work specific to their business
A company providing these services is called MSP or managed service provider.
What is a managed service provider?
MSP is the third party delivering services, which is most often an Information Technology service provider, managing and assuminsg responsibility to provide a defined set of business technology services to the clients, either the MSP or the proactively determines the services are needed. The MSP is responsible for the functionality of the equipment or service, managed under the SLA (Service Level Agreement). The SLA includes provisions for:
- typical downtime
- disaster recovery
- technical support
- help desk operations
Companies outsource the responsibility to maintain and anticipate the IT needs for an array of functions and processes to:
- improve operations
- cut expenses
- streamline IT management
What are the benefits?
Managed IT services have different benefits for both small businesses and large organizations; established and new ones. Using managed services offers you some benefits, such as:
- Filling skills gap. The managed services are ideal for a team that has no time, skills, and experience internally for managing certain business functions or choosing to focus efforts on any other initiatives. Getting help from an expert provides a service that allows the team to focus on the innovation without experiencing bogged down in routine tasks.
- Reliability. Worry less about the outages because MSP is responsible to keep the service available 24/7. IT support and services are provided under SLA. The in-house IT team is frequently juggling multiple responsibilities, but MSP focuses on perfecting the delivery of the specific service. It means focusing on the security and health of the service, and applying upgrades and patches as needed.
- Cost savings. A lot of managed services are tied to variable cloud expenses. The services save money on training and staff. Investing in MSP is cheaper and the cost is predictable, which is very useful in budgeting.
Kinds of managed information technology services
Managed Information Technology services range from general to specific. It relies on the requirements of your business. Some common services may include:
- monitoring and maintenance of equipment
- IT systems management
- remote monitoring
- management of servers
- network monitoring
- other support services
The old-style approach to managed services is a fixed model, which monitors systems until there’s a problem to remediate. A lot of managed service providers are taking a more proactive approach to maintenance and management, including predictive maintenance and patch management. If you are still a small business and planning to make use of managed services, why not try it?