Creativity is one of the things that sets a successful business apart from a failed one. When you learn how to think outside the box, you can take advantage of opportunities that others don’t even see, and react in ways that others cannot predict. With that in mind, why wouldn’t you apply this principle to your company’s IT management?
Instead of using a pure in-house approach or a cloud-only approach, you can combine these two methods. This is referred to as “co-management,” and it offers several significant advantages over both traditional approaches. With that in mind, let’s look at the five biggest advantages of co-managed services.
1. Same High-Tech Equipment At A Lower Cost
Normally, the best advantage of the cloud is the amount of money you can save on equipment. Instead of buying all your servers, routers, cables, etc., you can pay a monthly fee to rent someone else’s infrastructure. The downside of this is that you have less control over your data than before. With a co-managed approach, you should try to get the best of both worlds.
Most of the time, cloud services tend to be faster and more efficient than an in-house network. When you opt for a co-managed approach, you don’t really lose any of those advantages. The company will probably put certain limits on your co-managed account, but there is another benefit that you get in return: Reduced cost. Co-managed plans are usually cheaper because you are doing some of the work for them, but you will still be using the same high-tech infrastructure.
2. A 24-Hour Help Desk
When you choose to use a combined approach to IT, one of the things you should keep (from the cloud side) is a 24-hour a day help desk. This should be open 7 days a week and should be staffed with competent and qualified people. Of course, you could have done this with your in-house team, but that would take up too much of their time. Their primary job is to keep the internet running smoothly, and you want them to focus on that priority first.
Because a help desk is considered to be one of the minor features of a cloud plan, most companies will be quite willing to add it to your co-managed services. This is very good because most companies don’t have the resources to make the help desk into much of a priority. Anytime your employees have a problem, they can go to someone outside the company for help, at no extra cost to you.
3. Greater Access To Skilled Employees
Every IT department will have people that are more skilled and experienced than the others. In most cases, these top people will have to “babysit” the less competent people, reducing productivity and wasting time. With a co-managed IT approach, you won’t need as many people for your in-house team. Thus, you can be a little bit pickier and keep only the employees who are worth keeping.
At the same time, your IT team (and all your other employees) will gain access to a pool of experienced professionals that will probably be willing to help at any time. If they run into a problem that is not familiar to them, or if they simply need another expert opinion, a co-managed approach makes it far easier to deal with the problem.
4. Better Security
There is a long-standing debate as to whether in-house or cloud services are more secure. To be honest, this debate is kind of misguided because it all comes down to the skills of the individuals involved. However, a co-managed approach will usually have the best security.
Why is this the case, you might ask? Well, it’s because a co-managed approach allows you to have greater control over the various aspects of your IT management. Instead of trusting everything to a third party, you are taking care of the most important things in-house. By doing this, you create two “layers” of security, each of which presents multiple barriers to unauthorized entry. As a general rule, more layers will make data intrusion far less likely.
5. More Room For Negotiation
When you buy a cloud account for your business, you will be buying a ready-made product. There will be very little chance to customize your cloud, although you will have certain choices. Even then, you will probably be choosing between a small number of pre-made plans. With a co-managed approach, you get a lot more versatility.
A co-managed IT plan has to be custom-tailored for each business. The terms will, therefore, have to be negotiated. If you do a good job at this, you should end up with most of the advantages that you would get from a normal cloud plan. At the same time, it should be cheaper than a normal cloud plan. A lot of people like flea markets because of the opportunities for haggling, and many people like co-managed IT plans for the same reason.
Conclusion
The co-managed plan is a plan that may not work for everyone. If you don’t combine the two approaches properly, you could end up with the worst parts of both systems. Not only that, but this kind of setup will be more complicated by its very nature. That might make it harder for people to follow the guidelines, but most companies do not report serious problems here. We advise you to consult with your most educated and trusted IT professionals to find out if such a plan is right for you. Before that, however, you can go ahead and fill out the contact form.