A managed IT service isn’t just maintaining a website and DNS registration for your company. It can include a lot more, practically providing the full-fledged IT department that may otherwise not be possible for your business under a conventional approach.
The Old Model Hamstrings Fast Growth
The typical IT department in a company or agency tends to be network-centric. It is built around the network that the company uses and grows accordingly. With most of the resources focused first on maintaining and stabilizing the current physical server farm and peripheral in-house, all the additional issues needed tend to be add-ons (DevOps, database support, security, system auditing, planning, and more).
However, this costs money, and by the time a company is running full-fledged, it may not be able to afford much in staffing and growth beyond all the equipment outlay already spent and the core team keeping the infrastructure running right.
Many companies find themselves in a pinch following a traditional IT model because is not an area that typically generates its own revenue. Instead, IT is often seen as an administrative overhead cost except for maybe the few aspects that are directly associated with a new market breakthrough. The key for growing small and medium-sized businesses, as well as large ones looking for a leaner approach, is to stop thinking about IT in traditional terms. A number of factors make this possible now which wasn’t the case 20 years ago.
Cloud Possibilities Change the Picture
First, the cloud and the Internet make the scale and scope of what’s possible much, much bigger. With a cloud platform, scalability allows a business to grow or reduce as needed to what it is operating with and needs. This wipes out the sunk cost on heavy infrastructure and support that doesn’t get used but is needed to provide the core benefits the company has to have. Instead, the cloud approach allows a business to have that core function without waste, including related costs.
Second, cloud resources are available anywhere there is a connection. So, a workforce and expertise are not tied to a geographic location. This allows a business to take advantage of a wider pool of skills in a larger market of availability.
Third, the cloud approach typically is working with up-to-date software and tools that aren’t always the case with traditional platforms and networks using older tools because the next step up is too expensive.
Take Advantage of Digital Reach
With the cloud element in play, it stands to reason that a company that needs to grow its IT components can do so with a contracted service working and delivering software and digital elements through cloud resources extremely easily. And the cost of it all is far less than if the company brought the same approach in-house with permanent, ongoing resources that aren’t needed all the time or at 100 percent capacity.
Further, a company can easily grow its IT elements and services in a cohesive, planned manner with a managed IT service. From DevOps to system planning to storage and archive expansion for data mining a managed IT service can deliver all of these aspects in a modularized, scalable manner while still being cohesive with the systems the company already has. In a fast-moving world with additional needs coming online and older resources phasing out, having a support IT expert team online just makes a lot more sense for today than it did two decades ago.
So, while it’s not a model that fits everyone, a managed IT services Boston strategy should definitely be considered with any IT setup or expansion today. Hybrid models are common, so it’s definitely not a do-or-die approach to IT support; many companies blend their on-site resources with IT managed services on a regular basis, especially with augmented cloud platforms.
