If you’ve never heard about managed IT services before, then you might be pleasantly surprised by what you learn today. Managed IT services are a great way to improve your IT performance at every level. They are also hyper-versatile solutions that can be molded to fit any situation. But what are managed IT services? How do they work? What do they offer? Let’s go over the basics to ensure that you know everything you need to know about managed IT services in Philadelphia.
What Are Managed IT Services?
A managed IT service provider is a company that employs qualified IT techs as independent contractors. They then subcontract that labor to you at a reasonable rate. It’s a way to outsource some or all of your IT needs, but that’s only one way to use these services. Many companies choose to use managed IT services as a way of augmenting their existing IT department. So in the end, these are just services that are aimed at making your IT setup more efficient and more effective.
Benefits Of Managed IT Plans
There are numerous reasons why many companies employ other companies to manage their IT. First of all, you may not have the right people to run everything in-house. If your IT team has any gaps in their knowledge, it represents a significant weak point. You want to make sure that your IT employees never find themselves in a situation where they have no idea what to do. When you employ managed IT services, that will probably never happen. Working with one of these companies gives you access to a pool of top-tier experts on a 24-hour basis.
Security Benefits
Managed IT plans are also often used to enhance cybersecurity. Services like remote monitoring and data backup make you far less vulnerable to the many criminals of the world. Besides, when you use an outside company for security purposes, it creates an extra layer of security. That means one more set of barriers that an attacker will have to try and overcome.
To understand this, let’s consider a ransomware scenario: Someone infects your network and/or devices with a nasty ransomware variant. They have corrupted all your in-house data, including any on-site backup files. However, as long as they haven’t hacked your managed IT provider as well, your backup files will be safe. Thus, you do not have to comply with the ransom demands.
As for the possibility of someone hacking your managed IT provider, that is very remote because they probably won’t even know which company to target. Incidentally, this is why you should not publicly disclose anything about your data backups, where they are, or who has them. This is a case in which outsourcing can save a company from ruin by giving them a safe place to store sensitive material. Such material can be encrypted before storage, making it so that even your managed IT provider won’t have access to the contents.
Performance Benefits
Managed IT services can also offer significant benefits in the performance department. First of all, any good managed IT plan will come with a service-level agreement (sometimes called an SLA for short). This agreement will guarantee a certain amount of “uptime” every month. “uptime” is the time in which you are functionally connected to the internet. Network downtime (lack of access) can cost a company huge amounts of money in the form of lost business. When you have an outside company taking responsibility for the prevention of that downtime, the end result is fewer problems and higher productivity.
Managed IT services can also increase the speed and improve the performance of your IT resources by optimizing them for your purposes. A faster network generally means that everyone can do their jobs with less delay, and your IT provider should have people that know how to keep things running at maximum efficiency. They can also take charge of updating all systems and applications whenever necessary, meaning that everything will always be running at its best.
Examples Of Managed IT Services
Every managed IT plan is customized for one particular customer/company. No two companies conduct business in the exact same way, so this is very necessary. So, most managed IT plans will offer you the opportunity to pick and choose your services. Obviously, more services will mean a higher monthly bill, but that may be worthwhile if the services benefit your company in some significant way. Here are a few examples of common service types:
- Backup As A Service (BaaS): We already talked about data backup but BaaS can sometimes go much further. It should include all aspects of disaster recovery so that the policyholder will be fully prepared in the event of an emergency.
- Desktop As A Service (DaaS): This is a cloud-based service that gives your employees access to an identical desktop in any location. This kind of thing is mainly used by companies with a lot of remote workers.
- Security As A Service (SaaS): This term covers any and all security services that are included in your service plan. This might include network monitoring, data monitoring, management and analysis of logs, penetration testing, antivirus management, and lots of other things.
- Software As A Service (SWaaS): When you opt for one of these services, you are paying for access to specialized software. This might be an app designed specifically for your company, internal communication software, or any other specialized program that is leased on a month-to-month basis.
Conclusion
You should now understand the essentials regarding managed IT services. In the end, it’s just a simple way of outsourcing some of those complex IT needs to an outside company that specializes in IT management. Such a company should only be chosen if they employ the best people and deliver good results. It can be hard to find such a company, but we are going to make it easy for you. Just call PCH Technologies at (856) 754-7500.