managed it

Managed IT

5 Ways to Tell if You Should Outsource Your IT Needs to Managed IT Service Providers

Whether you’re just getting your business off the ground or you’re ready to make the transition to the digital world, there’s a lot that goes into building a network with the right infrastructure and security. In some cases, outsourcing your IT needs is the best course of action. Here are a few signs that you should consider outsourcing to a managed IT service provider.  #1 – It Will Propel Your Business Forward  It’s the digital age, and if your business is still dealing in pen and paper, it’s time to make the switch. The benefits associated with keeping your data digitally are innumerable, particularly when it comes to things like filing your taxes or even creating a marketing plan. Simply put, making the transition and giving your company an internet presence – and perhaps even utilizing the wonderful realm known as the cloud – will absolutely propel your business forward. In fact, failing to do so may leave you falling behind your competitors.  #2 – You Don’t Have a Plan in Place for Disaster Recovery If something were to happen right now and all of your in-house records were suddenly destroyed, do you have a plan in place to keep your business running, or would your data be lost forever? In today’s day and age, this is a critical consideration and one that far too many small businesses have failed to take seriously. If you need help with data redundancy and disaster recovery, outsourcing your IT needs may be one of the best moves you could make.  #3 – You’re Struggling to Find Time to Run Your Business Believe it or not, setting up and maintaining a network is a time consuming process and one that many business owners believe they can handle until they find themselves struggling to focus on core business competencies. Your ultimate goal should always be delivering products or services to your customers as efficiently as possible – and marketing your ability to do so, as well. If you find yourself falling behind because you are spending too much time dealing with network issues or maintenance, it’s time to consider outsourcing to a managed IT service provider.  #4 – Your IT Needs are Changing When you ran your business by yourself from home, your IT needs weren’t very complicated. However, now that you’re starting to see the potential for growth, you should be considering the best ways to expand your network capabilities, as well. If you know that your IT needs are changing – or even if they will be changing in the future – contact a trusted managed IT service provider to find out how they can help you grow. These services are far more flexible and scalable than you might think, and the best part is that they are more affordable than ever before, too.  #5 – Your Email and Antivirus is More than You Can Handle  If you and your employees are spending more time sifting through emails and dealing with viruses than actually doing your jobs, this is a real problem. Junk email is a serious issue in business environments and opening the wrong one could have disastrous effects. Though you can absolutely install your own email filters and antivirus programs, it takes time to keep them updated, and it takes even more time to configure them properly. Fortunately, this is yet another area where managed IT service providers excel. They can help you manage your emails and your antivirus in the background so you can focus on your job.  If you are struggling to keep up with your company’s IT needs, you are falling behind with your business’s core competencies, or you simply want to make certain that your company’s future is in the hands of capable professionals, outsourcing your IT team may be your best option. You can even customize a service package that perfectly suits your company and grows right alongside it both now and in the future.

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What Managed IT Support Really Means

As a business owner, you’ve probably heard the term “managed IT” more times than you can count, but there’s still a good chance that you don’t know what it really means or even how expert managed IT can help your business succeed. Below, you can learn more about what managed IT really means – and what it could mean for your business, too.  The Definition of Managed Services By its very definition, the term “managed services” refers to a business offloading many of its operations to an outside provider. Instead of the business owner constantly monitoring and managing his or her network and the other IT systems driving his or her business, the managed service provider handles it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For small business owners without the ability to hire a dedicated IT team, or for those who have a need to maintain an IT infrastructure but who only have a few employees, managed IT services can be a huge boon.  Why Businesses Choose Managed IT  Today’s businesses choose managed IT services for a wide variety of reasons, but ultimately, it has to do with a company’s need to have access to the latest technology in order to operate with any degree of efficiency. What’s more, companies that do not have access to the latest technology tend to fall behind their competitors; without modern IT, they simply cannot connect, collect data, and process data in such a way that allows them to maintain relevant in any industry at all.  Business owners also find themselves busy – incredibly busy – and unable to keep up with the routine maintenance that goes into IT. They forget to run backups as frequently as they should, and they may forget about downloading the latest security fixes and patches designed to keep their data (and their customers’ data) safe. As a result, these businesses are at risk of losing access to things like financial applications, email servers, and other things that are critical for everyday operations.  Managed IT is Not a Break-Fix Service Finally, it is important for all business owners to remember that managed IT is not a classic “break-fix” service. This means that it is not a service you employ when something goes wrong; rather, it is a service you employ to prevent something from going wrong in the first place. In today’s connected world, losing your connection for even a few hours can lead to unrecoverable business issues. Rather than waiting for something to happen, then calling an IT professional to resolve it while your business suffers significant downtime, managed IT support is always there, always watching, and always protecting your data and your network.  With managed IT support, business owners can stop worrying about things like backups, security patches, and even the latest antivirus definitions. By offloading these operations to an outside company that specializes in IT infrastructure and security management, business owners can spend less time with these simple but time-consuming tasks and more time running their businesses the way they originally intended.

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