Monday, April 6, 2015

The Value of Managed IT Services

So, What is "Managed IT Services"?

We like to call it...your virtual IT department.  Imagine staffing an entire company just to be your IT support, but not having to worry about training, employees calling in sick, or any other issues with an in-house staff.  Managed IT services means that you have access to an entire technology company when you need it, staff who is watching and proactively protecting your business data and network.

Here's How Your Business Can Benefit from Managed Services.

Remote Support - Most managed services providers will offer some type of remote support. Here's your scenario....
It's the end of the month and Sally comes to work to get payroll done. She turns on her computer first thing in the morning, opens an email attachment from a "customer", and sees an alarming pop-up on her screen, warning her that her PC has been infected and to immediately click below to fix her computer.

Instead of clicking, Sally places a quick call to her IT support help desk so that her managed services support can gain remote access to her PC and verify that the popup is indeed part of the virus.  Being trained and familiar with this type of malware, they then properly remove any traces of the malware without the PC getting completely infected and Sally is able to go back to work.

If caught quickly before anything else was loaded into the PC, this call may have only taken 15-30 minutes of her time. Now, there are instances where things are worse and it does take longer, but Sally's issue was resolved without having to schedule an engineer to come out on-site, saving both money and time. After all, productivity in a business is what really matters.

Scheduling Priority - So what if Sally's PC was already infected beforehand. This may prevent IT staff from gaining remote access to her PC, because unfortunately, that is what malware does. Your IT company may offer their managed services customers a scheduling priority. Basically, your emergencies take priority over other minor IT calls from customers who may not subscribe to managed services.

Proactive Network Management - aka..."Stopping threats before they happen."

Monitoring software can help manage your network, notifying staff when your server is no longer connected to the internet or your business network.  They can also receive status updates on possible hardware failures, keeping your network running and preventing problems before they happen.

Let's not forget to include email services that not only block SPAM, but blocks malicious programs that may try to enter your network through a email link or fake attachment.  What if Sally's virus-infected fake email was blocked before entering her email client?  She would have never seen the threat.

Management of your network security through your firewalls, routers, and even your antivirus software can prevent threats from ever entering the playing field as well.

Other benefits of managed services can include:
  • Disaster recovery planning & data backup management
  • 3rd Party vendor management & assistance
  • Software updates and Microsoft patch management 
  • and more depending upon your IT company's profile

How many people would you have to staff to take care of everything mentioned above?  

Don't forget, along with salaries, there's employee benefits to include. And the larger your company network is, the larger your IT staff would need to be to properly secure it.  So just maybe using a Managed IT services provider is what your business needs. And if you're not sure, find a local IT company like CMS IP Technologies that is willing to do a free evaluation of your network.