28 May The Value of Managed Services
Managed services are the fastest growing segment of the technology services industry, but a lot of people don’t understand what managed services are, or the benefits they bring.
Managed services provide ongoing operational monitoring and management of a customer’s network devices and infrastructure. Instead of a customer’s in-house network operations team tackling this burden, managed service providers (MSPs) perform the proactive monitoring of the customer’s environment. Unlike technical support, which in many cases is a reactive type of break-fix support, managed support are inherently proactive.
Managed services don’t simply serve as a vehicle for outsourcing network activities. Instead, they become a partnership between the customer’s technical staff and the MSPs blend of technical expertise.
People are tempted to see managed services as simply outsourcing internal technology functions to a third-party MSP, and in some cases, that is exactly what happens. The MSPs’ capabilities and associated deliverables are probably rather basic, which results in the lower price point of IT service. The value of the managed services in outsourcing scenarios is rather limited in this scope.
Customers who care about managed services are the ones who cannot risk the negative repercussions in the instance that severe network outages lock up their business. They need the assurance that expert personnel are using the latest tools and automation to keep an eye on the network, to look for anomalies in messages coming from the network, and to take care of incidents rapidly as they arise.
The smartest plan of action is for you to acquire the services of a company that will take care of everything for you. The company will provide all the expert, proactive monitoring and maintenance you need, will fix things quickly when they break, and will keep you informed of all activities. This is what an MSP offers to a customer.
For the customer, being able to focus on innovation and their own customers’ satisfaction is a business outcome well worth the cost of managed services. That is the most beneficial outcome that we offer: Our customers are freed up to do what they do best, and they leave the network problems to us, which, by the way, is what we do best!