Managed Network Services, getting the most for your business

More often than not, we are witness to internal IT resources being pulled in way too many directions. Most of their time is spent fixing the broken rather than ensuring the core platform of the organization they work for is living up to the objectives of the company itself. Too often, the initiatives that are meant to drive growth and profitability for the business takes a back seat to operational demands and the daily grind.

The solution to this conundrum is to either grow the IT department to enable the critical initiatives to be resolved or to find an effective partner to manage network solutions for you. Both alternatives can present problems for an organization; hiring additional staff can be costly and often counter-productive, while finding the right solution-partner may be difficult to achieve.

Let’s explore what to look for in an effective partner to outsource routine tasks and infrastructure and manage network services for your organization. Here are some key points that should help you find a partner that will fit perfectly into your business plans:

• Your information doesn’t sleep; ensure the solution provides 24/7 support where needed
• Ensure that there are guarantees for performance and equipment
• There are always some limitations to these types of services; learn where the limits are
• Does the supplier have expertise in this area? Get references, talk to their customers
• Is the service provider monitoring 24/7/365?
• You and the potential partner should consider both current and future needs

There are several reasons that might attract you and your organization to look more deeply into going the route of a managed network service:

• Human Resource limitations in your current staff
• Protecting mission critical information
• 24/7/365 SLA requirements
• Failover or uptime guarantee requirements
• Lack of capital
• Expertise gaps in IT knowledge
• Infrastructure needs fluctuation (as in the case of seasonal businesses)

IT outsource solutions can vary in cost, service and discipline, so prior to venturing into this managed service opportunity, first determine where your organization is spending the bulk of its time and effort and find where the greatest return can be had. For example, a common area where both financial savings and service improvements can be found is in email administration and management. There are many suppliers that offer both hosted and on-site solutions that all but eliminate the internal staff requirements and more often than not, improve the uptime as well. Other IT managed solutions might include firewalls, load balancing, file servers, web servers, VPN tunnels, cloud storage, backup and more. Make sure that the managed service provider offers some sort of service guarantee and the service itself is hands-on and not just shipped back to your resources.

The underlying purpose of choosing managed network solutions is to enhance the performance, reliability and security of an organization’s infrastructure, while reducing implementation costs and capital investment. These outsourced services typically utilize experts in the discipline, the latest technologies and infrastructure, while reducing costs for individual organizations by spreading costs to many rather than to the few. It makes good business sense to get a more reliable end product than what you currently use and pay less for it.