The accelerated adoption of technologies such as cloud computing, automation and artificial intelligence creates enormous operational benefits for most organizations but also contributes to increased network complexity. More than half of IT professionals say they are no longer confident in their organization’s ability to effectively manage this complexity, according to a new SolarWinds study.
As a result, more organizations are turning to managed IT services to augment internal IT staffs, optimize the technology environment and improve efficiency. Industry analysts say up to two-thirds of U.S. businesses now outsource at least some of their IT work to a managed services provider (MSP) every year.
Offering a suite of services that can be customized to meet the specific needs of an organization, MSPs can shoulder a good deal of the growing IT workload. MSPs typically provide 24x7 monitoring and management of an organization's IT infrastructure, allowing organizations to offload some background tasks in order to better allocate their own internal staff resources for strategic projects and core business activities.
Monitoring and Much More
The strategic benefits of the managed services approach are clear. Proactive monitoring and maintenance ensure that mission-critical systems are performing optimally and properly supporting business requirements. Relieved of these responsibilities, in-house staff can devote more attention to rolling out new applications and technologies that enhance the organization’s agility and competitiveness.
While monitoring and maintenance remain cornerstones of managed services arrangements, leading providers have invested in the skills and expertise required to take on more complicated tasks. For example, top providers now commonly offer level 3 engineering support for an array of complex network problems. This often includes on-call access to engineering expertise for a range of advanced networking and IT issues involving core routing and switching hardware, cloud platforms and application issues at every network layer.
Top providers such as Verteks have a deep bench of IT pros with certifications and real-world experience in a broad range of IT disciplines. In most cases, providers have expertise, skill sets and intellectual property that few organizations are able to afford in the open market. Additionally, relationships with top vendors ensure that MSPs have access to best-in-class tools and processes they can leverage on behalf of their customers.
Harnessing the Cloud
Such broad expertise is particularly valuable to organizations struggling with the cloud and remote access technologies necessary to support mobile, remote and hybrid work models. Having key resources scattered across an assortment of cloud instances, physical servers and virtual servers increases IT complexity, but organizations often face time, skills and budget constraints that prevent them from effectively managing such distributed IT environments.
Recognizing this gap, MSPs such as Verteks have made cloud-based solutions and services an increasingly important element of their solution portfolios. By developing expertise in cloud migrations, application mapping, workload sizing, shared services and automated policy management, we can help organizations develop a step-by-step plan for implementing and managing a hybrid IT environment.
Technology changes rapidly, and those changes often introduce new layers of complexity. Partnering with a qualified managed services provider such as Verteks is a cost-effective way to gain the manpower and expertise necessary to streamline and support increasingly complicated IT environments. Give us a call at 877-VERTEKS to discuss how our managed services offerings can support your business and technology objectives.
