The following are the differences in service that adopting an IT department as a service point of view can provide for a business. These differences are an integral and substantial part of how IT as a service works and operates.
1) Cost
The major cost of an internal IT department is personnel. An IT guru that can manage all of the IT functions that modern business needs will easily cost you more than 60 K per year. The price goes up if you need social media management, ad management, payment method management, or any of the other perks that attract and keep clients.
The additional costs of a person are benefits like health insurance, pensions, and family benefits.
You naturally expect your IT person to be available to work from home and they expect to be paid overtime. You lose your IT function and may lose your system if your IT man or woman decides to walk.
Managed IT support costs you between two and three thousand a month. The direct cost is less than half of what you pay for an individual. You pay nothing for benefits. You have no vacation or family emergency issues because trained personnel are available to take over for your designated IT person if they have a personal issue or leave the company that provides your managed IT service.
The costs of managed IT support are direct costs that are billed to the operating budget. The costs are not a capital expense. The purchase and maintenance of servers and the devices that allow servers to function are no longer a part of your budget.
2) Budgeting
Even the largest and most financially well off organizations face a tremendous bout of infighting about the allocation of funds for IT projects for each area of the organization. The allocation of resources can be more critical for small local businesses that face heavy local competition.
The centralization of IT budget allows any organization to manage their IT budget forecast more successfully. The managed IT support model provides the information needed about what department uses the most IT functions. This information can minimize the perpetual argument over funding.
Management gets a real world picture of what their IT dollar is doing now. This information is invaluable in making the changes in IT, operations, advertising, and sales that produce higher profits.
3) Security Issues
All companies face a growing security threat. New versions of ransomware have threatened to shut down companies across the globe. The threat was made null but newer and more sophisticated versions of this program are promised by the thieves who wrote the original version that failed.
There is an internal threat that many companies do not recognize. There is an app for everything. Many of your employees want to use their favorite apps to make their work faster and more efficient. The problem is that that app may have spyware attached that the user does not know about. The spyware can remain resident on your system for months and then be triggered to transfer your financial data, client data, or proprietary creations to another party for sale to a competitor.
Managed IT provides a higher level of security for all of your IT systems than an internal IT system can provide. Managed IT has personnel dedicated to finding the latest threats and updating your system with software that prevents the threat from ever reaching your system.
External server systems are designed to transfer your data between servers as needed or on a routine basis. This design makes your data harder to find and capture.
4) Backups
Internally created backups can be physically damaged beyond repair. Exposure to a source of magnetism is all that this takes.
If your system goes down and your backup is compromised then you have days and possibly weeks of work to physically recreate the data once you have restored the system and all the updates.
You can lose thousands of dollars of income recreating all of your base system. People can still use your internet sales platforms but they cannot connect to the final step to buy. Even the customers that love you the best can get frustrated and look elsewhere.
Managed IT provides a variety of backups that can get your system back on line in a few hours. Physical storage on severs and cloud storage prevents loss of income.
5) Uptime
Keeping your system up and running 24 hours a day is a full-time job. A single person is just not capable of doing this tremendous task. The more you endeavor to use technology to be competitive then the more likely you are to lose a piece of the pie.
Managed IT offers a solution for more uptime. There can be a single individual that is your go to IT person. This does not mean that you only have one resource. If you have problems a task force of experts will be assigned to get your system back up as soon as possible. Each person has specialized training in each area that your IT system requires.
6) Real World IT
Most IT people build in job security by writing code that only they can debug or decipher. This bit of guile prevents the person from being terminated and can wreak havoc in your business if they decide to leave you with a ticking time bomb.
Using managed IT eliminated this bit of gamesmanship from your many management headaches. Even one instance of this type of behavior on the part of a managed IT company can become internet breaking news that shoots down that company. Managed IT has your best interest as their best interest.
