It’s tempting to avoid investing money in a system that appears to be working just fine. Who cares if you start the car with a butter knife as long as it still works, right? But what happens when the patchwork clunker does go belly up? It’s a ridiculous example, but are you sure it’s not how you view your technology investments? Business IT infrastructures get more complex every year, and if your maintenance philosophy is “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” chances are you’ve got an expensive future ahead of you.
Maintaining and upgrading an entirely in-house IT infrastructure is enormously expensive to the extent that it’s usually well beyond the budgets of a typical SMB. You need to pay for hardware upgrades and software licenses, and you need to have a specially trained team to maintain the system and fix any problems that arise before they have a chance to cripple your business. If that’s all being handled by a couple full-time staffers, all it takes is one or two widespread issues to put your IT team way behind schedule.
Managed IT services providers (MSPs) essentially allow you to rent most of your computing resources for a flat monthly fee. Most hardware, software and operating environments are instead provided remotely by the vendor. Additionally, the vendor will be obligated to keep all systems up-to-date while also taking care of maintenance- and security-related issues. These systems are also scalable in nature, making them particularly well-suited to startups and small- to medium-sized businesses.
Overcoming Security Risks
They say that prevention is the best cure, and this couldn’t be truer in the case of IT security. Reducing your exposure to serious security threats like ransomware and phishing scams requires a proactive approach to ensure that malicious software never makes it past your firewall. Of course, you should always have a solid disaster-response plan in place as well, but there’s no substitute for taking every necessary step to prevent security breaches from arising in the first place.
Managed security services present an outsourced solution that proactively safeguards your business’s data and infrastructure with antimalware solutions, powerful firewalls and regular software updates. Maintaining your systems by always making sure you’re running the latest software and operating system versions is a crucial step toward closing any potential security holes. An outsourced security service will also prevent external threats from ever reaching your network.
Improving Productivity
Recurring issues with business computing infrastructures are one of the biggest causes of lost productivity in the workplace which, of course, translates into lost time and money. Unless your employees are specifically trained to troubleshoot computer crashes and software bugs (which, in itself, is another significant expense), valuable hours might end up being lost while everyone waits for your IT employee to get around to their issue. These recurring annoyances can also severely drain staff morale.
Aside from recurring problems, there are many repetitive, often maintenance-related tasks that can and should be automated to free up time and negate the chances of human error causing further issues. MSPs are tasked with solving any issues as quickly as possible with either on-site visits or remote assistance. And beyond security maintenance and troubleshooting, MSPs provide automated solutions for maintaining and updating your business’s computing resources.
Planning for Long-Term Success
Ask yourself which is the better solution: investing a consistent monthly budget into proactively maintaining your IT infrastructure, or spending an unknown fortune when things unexpectedly go wrong? In today’s highly competitive economy, businesses need to learn how to strategically navigate through the potential hurdles by always preparing for any eventuality. By adopting a cloud-computing model that features a proactively maintained computing infrastructure, you’ll be able to do just that.
Our cloud services take advantage of the latest technology to provide your business with a scalable and actively supported computing infrastructure. If you’d like to find out more about the tools we provide, give us a call today.
