Managed IT Services: How does it help me and my business?

What Are Managed IT Services?

At Simple IT, it’s all in our name, we make IT simple with what we call Simple 360. It’s our managed services program that gives you everything you need to manage, secure, and support

your business technology to make IT simple for your employees.

With Simple 360, we automate the day-to-day management of your workstations and get alerted to critical system failures before they become a problem. We defend your employees working anywhere from interlopers trying to steal your data and interrupt your business. We offer convenient, expert support that helps employees solve problems and get back to work faster across workstations, apps, and networks.

We make your life easier.

What services are most commonly used?

Managed IT services can encompass many responsibilities and be customized but typically include:

• Remote monitoring and management of hardware and infrastructure.

• Security services, including monitoring, penetration testing, threat hunting, or incident response.

• Configuration, monitoring, and management of cloud services. These can be rendered in cooperation with or outside of managed cloud services.

• Data loss protection, protect your local and cloud data with daily backups and offsite archival for fast and easy recovery.

Managed IT Service Benefits

There are numerous benefits that organizations can gain from the right managed IT service provider. These benefits often include:

• Filling the skills gap. Managed services can be good for teams that don’t have the time, skills, or experience internally to manage certain business functions on their own, or they choose to focus their efforts on something else. Relying on an expert to provide a service allows your teams to focus on innovation without getting bogged down in routine tasks.

• Cost savings. These services can save you money on staff and training. Using a managed service instead of building the capability in-house can be cheaper and the costs can be more predictable, which is helpful for budgeting.

• Reliability. You can worry less about outages because the managed service provider is responsible for keeping the service available at all times. The service and support are provided under a service level agreement (SLA) so it is clear what to expect and when to expect it. An in-house team is often juggling multiple responsibilities but an MSP can focus on perfecting delivery of their specific service. This means focusing on the health and security of the service, applying patches and upgrades as needed.

Two Steps to Effective Decision Making About IT MSP

When selecting an IT Managed Service Provider, there are several steps you can take to ensure that the one you choose fits your needs. Although these steps require some extra effort, careful assessment of your needs, assets, and goals helps ensure that you get the most from any provider you select.

1. Assess current IT systems

Taking a thorough assessment of your current IT needs and costs is the first step to finding an MSP. You need to understand what infrastructure and workflows you need managed, what resources you currently have, and what your budget is for management. During this assessment, you should also pay attention to what your business goals are.

For example, if you want supplemental support for an existing IT team, the providers you should consider are different than if you want a self-contained team. Additionally, consider whether managed services make sense in the long run. While it may be cheaper at first to contract out IT management and maintenance, as your organization grows you want to make sure your MSP can grow with you. Also, a good managed service provider can perform an audit to give you these answers. More on this below.

2. Request an audit of your current systems

You may want your MSP to perform an audit of your systems. This can help you determine if they have the support and experience needed to manage your assets. You want to make sure that providers are competent with any specialized hardware or software you are using or intend to use in the future. Consider scalability and flexibility when assessing potential vendors and pay attention to the capacity of the services they can supply. Providers should be able to scale with you and ideally should have more bandwidth, service hours, and expertise than you need.

Want to learn more?

Contact us today to learn more about Simple 360, our managed IT services program that gives you everything you need to manage, secure, and support your business technology to make IT simple for your employees.