Managed IT Services Can Help Your Business During These Difficult Times

The COVID-19 pandemic has every business on edge and looking for ways to mitigate some costs without directly impacting their ability to put out the product or service that their customers expect. When you begin to look at your IT, and try to establish what your IT support costs are, you may find that you are paying a lot more than you might like to keep your organization's IT running properly. This is where Managed IT services come in.

The concept of the managed IT services provider has only been around for over a decade. Many businesses that have moved in that direction were once break/fix value added resellers (VARs) that dealt in some specific products and services. The shift from break/fix to managed services was facilitated by the development of powerful automation software that provided well-trained technicians the opportunity to proactively monitor computing networks from a remote location. This, in turn, provided the businesses with a much more cost-friendly service, more effective IT, and a significant reduction in downtime. 

Industry Growth

One of the biggest draws that partnering with a managed IT service provider brings to your organization is that, for a small business, hiring expert IT talent is expensive. By simply choosing to outsource their IT management, a business can enhance the value of their IT support budget. They receive comparable attention to their IT, get access to the IT service provider’s direct availability to newer, more robust technologies, all while paying a static monthly rate to do so. From hardware to software, from networking to security, the modern IT company has access to all of the technology the modern business needs. That’s why organizations have been slowly switching over to managed IT services for the better part of the past decade. 

The industry’s growth is steady, but in that time, companies’ use of technology has skyrocketed. Some decide to hire in-house technicians, some choose to try and manage their own technology, but those that have chosen managed IT services get more bang for their buck.  Most businesses in North America and Europe expect their IT expenses to increase in 2020, and that was before COVID-19 pandemic threw a major wrench in the works. Regardless of what is going on in some sectors, IT budget growth is as large as 30% in some markets. Small and mid-size companies have been extremely active upgrading their IT as newer solutions provide them with more upfront capital, while larger companies have been rolling out strategic security upgrades to keep organizational risk down. 

Not surprisingly, the largest driver for IT growth is the need to upgrade outdated IT. This is leading the MSP into expanding their offerings, as well. Many companies have been utilizing cloud computing via their managed service providers. Nearly anything you can do on a server these days you can do on a virtual server hosted in the cloud. 

Emerging Technologies

IT companies have been looking to innovative new technologies to build a catalogue of solutions that would be attractive to any-sized organization for some time. This hasn’t stopped. With today's data becoming a major commodity for almost any type of company, these IT organizations have started using their expertise with information systems to push new ways for companies to collect, process, and analyze that data. That’s why you see IT support companies dabbling in data warehousing and business intelligence services, offering value that simply wasn’t there a short time ago.

Another technology that many MSPs have really ramped up on recently is managed security services. With the use of specialized tools and practices, IT service companies can now provide solutions for any type of organizational security threat. Modern IT service companies are capable of protecting your company with traditional methods of training and monitoring to advanced services like dedicated SIEM services, data forensics, and advanced solutions that utilize machine learning to mitigate threats. Today's IT company prioritizes the security of organizational data like never before.  

Tried and True

With all these new technologies emerging, IT providers will have to react to ensure that their trusted IT technicians provide the kind of services and support required for industry demand. With COVID-19 grinding many economies to a halt, and putting people out of work, many analysts believe that we are on the verge of one of the largest recessionary periods in modern financial history. The MSP of today knows how to help people enhance their business’ technology, secure that technology, and support the entirety of a business’ technology. Modern MSP can even help with situations that an MSP doesn’t actively provide, like physical security, website creation, audio-visual services, and printer and copier sales. Their bread and butter, however, are solutions like a dedicated help desk, 24-hour-network monitoring, availability to hardware and cloud services, vendor management, and patch management will keep the 2019 version of IT as an essential part of doing business. 

If you would like more information about how Macro Systems can provide your business with unparalleled value, call us today at 703-359-9211 to talk to one of our consultants.