Tasks that are handled by a third-party provider, frequently in the context of business information technology services, are known as Managed IT Services.
The model of managed services is a way to offload general tasks to an expert to reduce costs, improve the quality of services, and free the internal teams to do work that is specific to their business. A company providing such service offerings is known as a managed service provider (MSP).
Defining Managed Service Providers
The third-party delivering services is known as a Managed Service Provider. They are most often an IT service provider managing and assuming responsibilities for providing a defined set of services related to business technology to its clients, either proactively or as an MSP (not as a client) determining the required services.
The managed service providers are responsible for their service functionality or equipment, managed under a service level agreement (SLA). The SLA contains provisions for typical downtime, disaster recovery, technical support, and operations related to the help desk.
The customer receiving the service usually gives a payment of a monthly subscription.
Organizations usually outsource the responsibility to maintain and anticipate the requirements of IT for a range of processes and functions for improving operations, cutting expenses, and streamlining the management of IT.
Advantages of Using Managed IT Services
Managed IT services are profitable for huge companies, small businesses, new companies, and established ones.
Some benefits of using managed services are-
- Filling the Gap in Skills- Managed IT services can be good for teams lacking the time, skills, or internal experience in order to manage certain functions of the business on their own or deciding to focus on making efforts to other initiatives.
Relying on an expert to provide a service that permits your team to keep their focus on innovation without losing motivation in everyday tasks.
- Cost Savings- A lot of Managed IT Services are tied to variable expenses of the Cloud. These services save you the money spent on staff and training. Expenses for other managed services are usually included in a fixed monthly charge.
Involving a managed service company rather than building in-house IT operations is cheaper, and the costs are more predictable, which is helpful for budgeting.
- Reliability- You can worry less about outages as the provider of the Managed IT Services is responsible for making the service available all the time.
Services and IT support are given under an SLA, so the expectations are set clearly regarding what will be provided and when it will be provided.
An in-house IT team is often handling various duties, but the focus of an MSP is always on perfecting the delivery of their specific service.
This refers to keeping the focus on the health and security of the service as well as applying the necessary patches and upgrades.
What Types of Managed IT Services are available?
The range of Managed IT Services can be from general to specific, as per your needs. Common services include monitoring and maintenance of equipment, IT systems management, remote monitoring and server management, monitoring of networks, and other services for support.
A break/fix model is the traditional approach to managed services monitoring systems until there is the presence of an issue that needs to be remediated. A lot of providers of modern managed services take a more proactive approach to maintenance and management, which includes the management of patches and predictive maintenance.
Managed IT Services based on Cloud have a range from specific applications delivered “as a service” (Software-as-a-Service or SaaS) to platforms and infrastructure-as-a-service (PaaS and IaaS).
These services help in scaling business rapidly to meet the increasing demand without the associated data center and costs of IT infrastructure. Services based on Cloud can also provide greater data, analytics, and storage access.
Managed Security Services are provided for both traditional bare metal infrastructure and cloud services by other organizations. Having security experts who are both reliable as well as trust is equally important to organizations with hybrid cloud infrastructure.
Difference between Managed IT Services and Outsourcing
Often, the terms Managed IT services and Outsourced IT services are used interchangeably by people. The confusion originates from the broadly similar structure in such business arrangements. In both situations, some part of a company’s business or IT tasks is delegated to a third-party team to improve efficiency and increase productivity.
But, there is one key difference. A company providing outsourcing services will generally take up only some part of an IT task and complete it by following a particular set of instructions. This task is time taking, and the outsourcing company gets paid for providing services during that time period.
On the other hand, a managed service provider looks after the complete IT infrastructure of a company, taking all its strategic decisions and actively recommends improvements for business operations by charging a monthly subscription fee only.
Thus, managed IT services prove to be a great option for small and medium-sized businesses looking to make it big in the industry.
