Managed services is the practice of outsourcing services to a trusted partner. Whether it’s moving from on-premise software solutions to cloud-based technologies or focusing on your primary business while outsourcing IT management, managed services enables your organization to move as fast as technology, without capital expenditures and worries about constantly re-training—or retaining – IT staff.
Here are five reasons to turn to managed services:
Trend toward distributed workforce. The traditional concept of “work” has changed. Work is no longer a place to go, it’s something people can do from home or even on the road. To enable this level of workplace flexibility, however, it’s essential that employees can stay connected and access the data and documents needed to do their jobs. Cloud collaboration solutions, including voice, messaging and video, are not tethered to one physical location. Since they’re hosted in the cloud, they’re available from any location with an active internet connection and via a large ecosystem of devices. Managed services make cloud-hosted collaboration solutions accessible to organizations of all sizes.
Cost savings. The cost of real estate to house data centers can be significant. In addition to the usual costs for hardware, power and cooling, data centers can take up large amounts of square footage. That square footage can add significantly to a company’s bottom line. By utilizing managed services, embracing cloud solutions and virtualizing systems, IT departments can reduce the sheer amount of data center hardware they need to house on-site. This reduction in hardware effectively minimizes the size of the data center footprint and enables the company to either rent less space or be able to redeploy that space to a profit generating center.
Increased employee retention and productivity. Virtualization enables businesses of any size to allow employees to work from home—or anywhere. Eliminating geographic borders not only allows organizations to cast a wider net when searching for talent, it also makes it easier to retain that talent once hired. One reason remote work can boost retention is that employees have more freedom to make life decisions that might otherwise require a job change. Many small and medium-size companies lack the budgets and IT bandwidth to purchase and implement their own virtual infrastructures. Desktop-as-a-Service solutions are hosted and managed by external solution providers, and eliminate the need for an organization to add new IT infrastructure.
Human capital. Human capital is another way that managed services can help agencies as they move to the cloud. Human resources can be a major bottleneck to traditional infrastructure, especially when it comes to both retraining existing staff and replacing staff who leave. As organizations lose IT resources, they’re having trouble finding and hiring qualified candidates without losing time, especially in today’s rapidly changing IT environment. This obstacle is especially prevalent in the federal space, as the government workforce approaches a huge bubble of new retirees in the next few years. Managed services helps mitigate this coming risk, ensuring that seasoned experts are poised to take over when existing staff retire or leave. Especially in the ever-evolving cloud space, seasoned experts can help organizations look at all offerings in cloud space and decide the right mix of services to use.
Speed to market. Managed services can have a positive impact on speed to market with new application development. Procurement takes time—time that results in delays to market as developers are forced to wait on a laborious procurement process. With managed services, agencies have the ability to procure platforms, software and infrastructure as-a-service so they are immediately available to developers, allowing much faster application deployment.
COMMENTS