Category: Tech Tips

Two-thirds of businesses use managed outsourced IT services, but what are they and how do they work?

Blog Sections

• What can a managed IT service do for your business?
• Managed security service provider
• Advantages of managed IT services
• Disadvantages of managed IT services

If you are looking for outsourced IT support in London, managed IT is a great option.

What is Outsourced IT Support?

Outsourced IT support is a third party IT service that eliminates the need for your business to maintain its network and computers.

Haree Patel, CEO

Managed IT ensures that your devices are always up to date with the latest security features, ensuring your network is always up and running, the VoIP phones always ring and all sensitive data is secure and backed up.

Managed IT also provides disaster recovery services should anything happen to your data centre or any of your hardware. It will save you time and money and provide peace of mind regarding uptime and downtime. 

Having up-to-date IT is essential for modern businesses and COVID-19 and remote working have only exacerbated that. Having said this, it is no small task to transition to new IT operations and systems.

A good MSP (managed service provider) will be able to provide you with an in-depth review of your current IT network. Then, based on the findings, they can make recommendations to proof your business IT for the future. For example, a straightforward recommendation we often make to our clients is to upgrade their Wi-Fi router’s setup to a Wi-Fi 6 system which improves capacity, connectivity and security.

In the last year, managed IT services have become powerful assets, partnering with businesses to adapt to pandemic-related restrictions. They helped clients adopt remote working and brought value through business resilience solutions like RMM (remote management and monitoring) along with cloud-based services such as VoIP phone systems.

What Can a Managed It Support Service Do for Your Business?

Managed IT is a business model in which an outsourced service provider manages your information technology. Meanwhile, a managed service model tends to be subscription-based in which providers usually agree to pay a certain amount each month in exchange for ongoing system management.

The specifics of what a managed IT plan entails can vary depending on your organisation’s individual needs and the company’s skillset. Most managed services providers can offer a basic package of daily support and more sophisticated deals that include disaster recovery, VoIP, onsite engineers, server maintenance, backup recovery and printer management, to name a few.

Managed IT services usually encompass a wide range of internet and computer functions, whereas managed IT solutions provide business owners with solutions encompassing everything from network, application and system management to payroll, server maintenance, backup/recovery services and printer management.

Managed IT can also benefit staff when it comes to equipment. For instance, remote workers requiring new equipment such as keyboards or monitors can order this themselves. This means that whilst providing visibility and control over supplies for IT departments, accounting won’t need to worry about running these purchases through expenses either.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) can use a managed service provider (MSP) to provide in-house cloud services or act as brokers for other cloud providers. The bonus of this process is that your MSP will have a responsibility to ensure all the software is fully installed and monitored to ensure up-time and functionality.

Managed Security Service Provider

As the risk of security breaches grows, many companies have opted to outsource their IT needs and responsibilities to protect equipment and data. Managed security service providers (MSSPs) provide efficient patch management (security updates) and responsive backup services.

The advantages and disadvantages of a managed IT service depend on the type of service, but there are common considerations that any business should take into account before outsourcing that function, including the following.

Advantages of Managed It Services

1. IT Expertise

Building and maintaining a top-notch IT team can be expensive, time-consuming and demanding. That’s why you might want to consider outsourcing the part of your company that needs technical support to an experienced service provider.

2. Predictable Costs

Acquiring a small in-house team that provides fully comprehensive support will cost hundreds of thousands of pounds each year. That’s not even including recruiting and set up costs!

Rather than paying open-ended prices when IT issues occur with freelancers, businesses can have a contract that outlines what they will pay in monthly instalments to account for potential problems. In the long run, managed IT will reduce costs.

With the right support plan, you will have peace of mind knowing that your IT will only cost a fixed fee each month regardless of the situation.

3. Maintenance & Upgrades

Managed IT takes away the need for organisations to worry about software updates and they can have access to new technologies that would otherwise have been out of their reach.

4. Cost & Time Savings

Outsourcing the management of security services, for example, reduces the demands for an in-house IT department. Outsourcing your IT also outsources management headaches such as PAYE, holidays, absences and performance management.

Disadvantages of Managed It Services

1. Control

If there’s an outage or incident, the business has little recourse as they rely on third-party help. Theoretically, a well-managed service provider will respond faster than an internal IT team. An internal IT team for a small or medium-sized business will have nowhere near the expertise or resources as a dedicated IT support provider such as ourselves. 

2. Flexibility

The flexibility of a managed IT service is more limited than having a solution customised to business needs. You will find that as your business expands, you will have to increase your level of IT support to meet demands.

3. Reliability

If your MSP goes bust or has a catastrophic event like a fire, you are left vulnerable. In the latter case, iceConnect has multiple redundancy protocols to keep their clients’ networks fully functioning in the event of a catastrophe.

Whether or not businesses decide to go down the route of a managed IT service provider, it’s not a market that is going away any time soon. In fact, according to a new report from Global Market Insight, this particular segment of the industry was estimated to be worth $350 billion in 2019 and continues to grow larger with COVID-19 pushing many organisations into adopting managed services.

As the number of offerings and the capability of existing offerings grows, there is no doubt that we will see companies of all sizes making use of outsourced managed IT services for varying parts of their business.

To help all those scouring the market for the perfect outsourced managed IT support provider, we have created a managed IT support buyer’s guide. This comprehensive PDF document covers every single question you should be asking when choosing an IT support provider.

Simply click on the link below to download the guide or contact us directly if you’d like to book a free, no-obligation demo of how iceConnect can boost your business’ productivity.

Why not contact us to book a free no-obligation managed IT support demo with iceConnect’s director, Haree Patel.