There is hardly a company in today’s business world that doesn’t depend on technology for at least part of its operations. Nowadays, technology plays a critical role in many businesses – just think of the amount of technology needed to run a business: Computers, servers, printers, networks, software for internal and customer-facing operations, apps, workstations, cloud solutions, just to name a few. When you add in the ever-evolving technology, it’s clear that managing IT can be a challenge for businesses of all sizes.
Rather than a vendor, an effective “managed service provider” or MSP is a business partner that provides the management team and front-line IT managers with visibility into spend and security gaps, and makes and implements optimization recommendations as best practices to achieve a best-practices oriented architecture. It also provides daily monitoring and incident/event management activities to relieve you of day-to-day maintenance tasks. The managed cloud services market has grown from $27.15 billion in 2017 to $53.78 billion in 2022, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.6%!
The question MSP or own IT is a common debate and a worthwhile consideration to ensure your company’s productivity and continuity as your startup grows. If you’re a one-man show and know your way around technology, you may not need managed IT services. But for small businesses and startups looking to grow their business, an MSP can be a worthwhile and beneficial investment until they reach a certain size. When we say startups, we mean both high-tech and technology-focused startups that are less than five years old and have fewer than 100 employees.
High-tech startups are the high-risk, high-reward startups that lead the way with technological innovations. Their success is based on providing innovative technologies and patents and carries a high level of risk as they may never adapt to the commercial market.
Tech-enabled startups, on the other hand, do not create new technology, but work creatively with existing technology and provide complementary solutions to improve an existing market.
While it may seem that high-tech startups see more value in using a managed IT provider for their comprehensive and advanced IT needs, tech-enabled companies still rely heavily on technology, perhaps even more so.
The point is, using an MSP doesn’t have to be an all-encompassing solution where your entire infrastructure is managed by a third-party provider. You can always outsource some parts of your IT operations while keeping others in-house. Whether you’re a high-tech company or a technology-focused startup, using an MSP can be beneficial either way.
An MSP offering cloud managed services has the tools, the right processes and the right skills to manage your environment 24/7. It also provides security solutions and resources to remediate threats and help scale the business. The following benefits are worth highlighting:
Expenses are a constant issue, especially for startups. Hiring cloud experts isn’t always the answer when working with a limited budget. Having IT redundancy can stifle a budding business even before it has taken root. Therefore, acquiring the latest on-cloud service is a great advantage for small businesses. While an MSP takes care of IT and systems, companies can grow their business.
An engaged MSP handles all aspects of the cloud ecosystem, from installation to delivery of critical IT and data-related services. MSPs specialize and can help you expand quickly. It also takes care of the processes and evolving technology needs. This frees up the startup’s resources, especially its employees, to focus on growing and adding value to the startup’s offerings.
As a business owner, have you ever thought about how you could recover all your systems and data in the event of a disaster? If not, you should. Do you know what you need to get your business back up and running in the event of a disaster?
Is your company’s IT infrastructure on site? If so, a disaster or critical server outage will likely affect your daily business operations. You’re also at risk of losing data that’s critical to your business processes and overall growth.
However, when your data is stored in the cloud, even the most catastrophic situation can be a normal day at the office. You will experience minimal to no downtime! This is a huge benefit when you consider that one hour of downtime costs a small business about $8000 and a large business about $700,000.
Even in the event of a host failure, you can fall back on standby cloud servers, and since everything runs on a virtual platform, the risk of hardware failure is virtually eliminated. This is one of the main reasons our customers have switched to managed services in the cloud. An MSP is invaluable when it comes to creating an efficient disaster recovery plan.
MSP uses a Cloud Management Platform on the back end to provide visibility into the environment. The CMP, which addresses cost, security, compliance and automation parameters, provides recommendations to optimize the environment according to best practices. The tool-based approach minimizes manual intervention.
We don’t want to mince words: Cyberattacks are a guarantee and now a very plausible scenario. This is a scenario your company should never experience. Cybersecurity issues are becoming a daily problem for many businesses. According to Accenture, 68% of business leaders believe the risk of a cyberattack has increased significantly. According to Symantec, 43% of small businesses have become targets of cyberattacks.
Have an MSP provide up-to-date security methods. These include network monitoring, software and backup plans for cybersecurity scenarios. Putting your systems in the hands of an MSP will greatly reduce your risk of being attacked by cybercriminals or with malware and phishing attempts. Firewall setup, VPN tunneling and monitoring are all services that can be easily managed and kept up to date by a managed services provider.
Things that have been routine – be it data processing, storage or protection – are to be supplemented by AI. These include more intuitive processing of data instead of waiting for instructions, automatic generation of a series of reports with all parameters and, above all, active monitoring to protect the data. The latter has always been a futile endeavor without intuitive measures. AI changes that completely with better threat reporting and countermeasures that respond dynamically to situations.
While data remains central to the existence of MSPs, the sources of that data are changing significantly, such as IoT-enabled devices, voice-enabled devices, and NLP-programmed devices. While these make servers obsolete, they still require support for data processing and backup.
Having a reliable MSP means you can rest assured that your IT needs are in the hands of experienced IT professionals.
Almost every business needs IT, but not every business has the resources to invest in hiring and training an entire IT department. MSPs are designed to provide skilled IT professionals who act as your off-site IT department.
Top 11 RMM tools Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools are essential for IT professionals and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to efficiently manage and monitor
Top 8 WSUS alternatives Windows Server Update Services, commonly referred to as WSUS, serves as an essential element within the Windows Server ecosystem. It empowers
Understanding is the be-all and end-all: Identifying risks from IT security gaps IT security breaches and resulting data loss pose a major financial risk to
hs2n Informationstechnologie GmbH
Phone: +43-720-505765
E-Mail: support@xeox.com
UID-Number: ATU61747603
Company Reg- No.: FN262506P
Get all latest news, exclusive deals and updates + free 30 day XEOX trial.