How to Get More Hours in Your Day: A Managed IT Service

How to Get More Hours in Your Day: A Managed IT Service
used with permission from the Cisco Small Business Resource Center

How many staff hours would your business reclaim by outsourcing network maintenance and support?

A managed service provider (MSP) can handle it for you around the clock–remotely monitoring your network, proactively averting problems, updating and patching systems, and responding to tech support calls. And it would probably save you money too.

Cutting IT Equipment and Labor Costs

Your company may prefer to have an in-house IT department. But the cost to sustain in-house network maintenance and support can be shocking.

The capital expense (CapEx) for a management system could easily be $50,000 to $250,000, or more, for the software and servers that provide continual monitoring, updates, and backups.

The annual cost for the in-house expertise is also large. The starting salary, taxes, and benefits for one network administrator are at least $75,000; that doesn’t include the expenses to recruit and hire, and to regularly fund new skills training. Do you need 24/7 coverage? That’s four network administrators, for a minimum cost of $300,000.
You could avoid incurring some staff costs by relying on an IT service that charges by the hour to respond to service calls. These “break-fix” IT services have disparate levels of expertise and customer satisfaction.

Outsourcing maintenance and support to an MSP can eliminate all of these problems.

Unlike a break-fix service, an MSP continually monitors and maintains the entire network, proactively preventing service calls and expenses, as well as downtime.

Unlike in-house staff, the MSP assumes responsibility for the CapEx and the IT labor costs.

How to Get Started

When evaluating a maintenance and support MSP for your business, be sure to:

• Investigate the MSP’s customer references and technical certifications. Do they combine industry-leading network technical training, tools, and resources with an in-depth understanding of the customer’s business?
  
• Clearly define the services you want. .
  
• Review the depth and breadth of the MSP’s staffing.
  
• Get demonstrations of the customer web portal, help desk, and remote monitoring and management dashboard that the MSP will use for your network.

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