Here at QuoteColo, we understand an inherent truth in business: IT solutions are only ever thought about when they break. We understand that you understand IT services are needed to run your business yet unless something goes wrong with them or they begin costing your business too much money, IT solutions are just another aspect of your company you need to keep it running smoothly. They are needed yet never thought about.
For this reason, a popular avenue for SMB’s and larger companies is to outsource their IT needs to a managed service provider to allow that MSP to control and handle all company IT concerns. While this avenue might sound like a great idea to you, we want to present you with a quick list of pros and cons of outsourcing IT needs to a managed service provider.
Pro: Outsourcing to IT Experts
Maybe you’re a small bakery, maybe you make your living selling Los Angeles based GoPro and other cool camera gear or maybe you bring home the bacon catering to the needs to outdoorsmen. Whatever it is you do, we can almost bet, if you are reading this article, you aren’t an IT solution provider. Due to that, we can almost just as safely assume you don’t know the difference between colocation and cloud hosting nor do you know the difference between VPN tunneling protocols and secure shocks tunneling. And here is the thing, you shouldn’t have to.
As such, the one major benefit of outsourcing is gaining the years of knowledge your IT MSP has. You don’t have to know what a hypervisor is. Your IT MSP will handle it.
Con: Losing Control
This goes hand in hand with trusting a third party (that’s what a MSP is) to take care of your IT needs. While you are paying your outsourced provider to supply the IT resources, control and security you need, once you move your IT solutions out of house, you lose daily and immediate control of those services.
The biggest issue here is trust. Sure, you are gaining a seasoned IT provider yet do you trust them to do their jobs and treat your business with the same dedication, care and spirit you do? As Billy Joel says, “it’s a matter of trust”.
Pro: Pay For What You Use
We all dig saving money. One of the major benefits of outsourcing your IT needs to a MSP is cost savings. As most MSP’s, in terms of cloud hosting, utilize the pay-for-what-you-use model, your IT solutions effectively make less of an impact on the size of your wallet.
If you don’t believe us, believe a CompTIA study which found when IT needs are outsourced to managed service providers:
● 46 percent of managed IT service users have cut their annual IT costs by 25 percent or more.
● 50 percent of managed IT service users have cut their annual IT costs between 1 percent – 24 percent.
Moreover, a 2015 CIO study found the following fact:
● ROI/cost savings was a driving factor for 33 percent of companies with 100 or more employees and 28 percent of companies with fewer than 100 employees. –
All told, investing in IT managed service providers is a step to reducing overall OPEX (operating expenditure) and CAPEX (capital expenditure) cost concerns on a monthly basis for the SMB.
Con: Understanding Competing MSP’s
You’re not an IT nerd. As mentioned in Colocation Chicago, knowing what a hypervisor or SAN is means next to nothing for you. You just want your phones, email, website and sales channels to work properly. This said, if you don’t have knowledge of the hardware, software and energy it takes to keep your network going, when you go to outsource your IT needs to a MSP, how will you know which MSP is best for your company?
If you don’t understand the technology behind your business, how will you know which outsourced IT provider is the best fit for your company, it’s needs and the industry you compete in?
A key consideration here is the SSAE16 Type II audit. When searching for an IT managed service provider, make sure they have the SSAE16 Type II audit. Having this audit is a security blanket for you letting you know your msp has been audited and verified by other tech industry experts.
Pro: Patch Management, Software and Hardware
Remember that time you had to buy a new server because the one in your closet overheated? Or remember that time when you had to update your entire office from MS Office 2000 to MS Office 2013? Or how about the time you forgot to patch some of your local software causing a bug to rear its ugly head wiping out half your business data from 2002? Yeah, these things happen and when they do happen, they cost money, they cause headaches and they cause people to lose their jobs.
One of the biggest benefits of outsourcing your IT solutions to a MSP is not having to worry about patching software, updating software or fixing network hardware. You pay your MSP to take care of all of that. Instead of having to worry about the most recent security patch from Microsoft, you can take care of customer acquisition while your MSP deals with the patch.
Con: Ensuring Full Support, 24/7/365
You know who you have on your staff and you know when they are on the clock. You hire people to do a job during certain hours of the day to make sure that job is done correctly. Yet, when you outsource to a MSP, you are putting that same trust into an organization to ensure their employees (IT engineers) are accountable and on-top of day-to-day issues.
For this reason, not only do you have to trust your MSP’s sales team and support team, you have to understand who they have on the clock and how many are working on your business needs. Depending on the size of your IT footprint, you might need as many as ten engineers working on your business at a given moment.
Before you invest in an outsourced IT MSP, make sure you know their staff in and out.
Pro: Getting Back To Business
The single best benefit of outsourcing your IT needs to a trusted MSP is getting back to business. The basic idea behind outsourcing IT concerns is so they don’t concern you allowing you to get back to focusing on your core business.
The biggest benefit of outsourcing, when done right, is freeing you up to do what it is you do.
Quick Summary:
Pros:
- Outsourcing to IT experts
- Paying for what you use, i.e., reducing monthly IT spend
- Patch management, software management, hardware fixes
- Getting back to business, i.e., not worrying about IT concerns
Cons:
- Losing control of your internal solutions, i.e. do you trust your MSP?
- Understanding what your MSP offers compared to what another possible provider offers. You have to know which IT strategy works best for your business
- Outsourcing your IT needs to a MSP means trusting engineers you don’t know
In addition to these, it should be mentioned heightened security is a major benefit of outsourcing to a MSP.
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If you have any questions or concerns on moving forward, feel free to contact Quotecolo with some of your question.