Large organizations with an internal IT staff often don’t see the need to hire a managed IT services provider in Utah. Many believe that the internal IT department will be able to handle all of the technology needs for the company, and for the most part they are right.
However, even with full time IT personnel, there are several benefits to adding managed IT services to the equation. When the company is able to partner with an IT services provider, the partnership can actually help to reduce their IT costs.
Management Tools
Most managed IT service providers use enterprise level tools to manage all of the hardware they have responsibility over. These tools are built to manage thousands of endpoints, and can be very expensive.
For a single organization, purchasing these tools would be cost prohibitive since they don’t need to manage the broad range of devices that managed services providers do. However, the tools are incredibly beneficial for any organization.
These management tools include features like alerting on hardware issues, massive installs of software products or policies, finding network slowdowns, remote control capabilities to assist with any issues remotely and more. This level of automated and remote management can really help make the internal IT department more efficient.
The cost for the management tool alone, likely exceeds the cost the company would have to pay to partner with an IT services provider.
Broad Expertise
There are two big limitations of an internal IT staff. The first is the distribution of knowledge about the company’s network. For smaller IT teams, there are only a few people that hold the keys to the kingdom, so to speak. When you are unable to get a hold of one or multiple members of the staff, you could be dead in the water until they return.
With a managed services partner, the business network is well documented, and any member of the staff can pick up and help resolve the issue at any time. They also generally have an on-call technician available after hours for issues that arise.
The second problem with just relying on the internal IT department is the smaller scope of knowledge for the techs, since the team can be much smaller than a standard IT services firm.
It is difficult for an individual to be an expert on all technical topics. Managed IT services providers have a broad range of techs with expertise in various topics. Since the provider usually manages multiple types of companies, their knowledge extends beyond the single business network as well.
The internal IT staff is then able to rely on the IT services provider to fill holes in their knowledge gaps, and cover them when they are unavailable, both teams win.
Offload Menial Tasks
Some of the most tedious IT related tasks have been automated. Unfortunately, technology is not always foolproof, and there still needs to be someone to watch over these tasks to make sure they are happening, and fix them when they are not working properly. These include operating system and software updates, backups, virus scans and more.
Internal IT may also have their hands full with more important tasks, and dealing with every day printer issues or other common IT problems end users encounter can take them away from those.
Offloading these menial tasks to a managed services provider can free up the internal staff to plan for bigger projects or handle more important issues or maintenance.
Assist With Projects
On the other side of the coin, some IT departments prefer to partner with a IT services provider to assist with large projects. The internal staff might not have the expertise to migrate their users from one platform to another, or perform a server upgrade.
As IT services providers perform these projects on a regular basis, using the expertise provided can help take some pressure off of the internal staff.
There are obviously many benefits to partnering with an IT services provider for large organizations. If you are interested in discussing how we can help your internal department please contact us. We would love to work out a partnership that both companies can benefit from!