10 key benefits of utilizing a managed service provider.

In the IT world, staying competitive means staying ahead of trends and driving your business through innovation. But how can your teams innovate when they’re bogged down with the day-to-day operations required to keep your business running. Leveraging a trusted, third-party managed service provider (MSP) provides benefits that will improve your overall business operations and free up your teams to focus on mission-critical advancements to help you grow.

1. Security

   Improve your company security posture by empowering an MSP to proactively manage the security patching burden while also watching for real-time breaches and threats. Collecting and reviewing event logs while correlating the data for active breaches is a full-time, 24×7 activity. Remediating during a critical security compromise requires a tested playbook with the appropriate expertise.

2. Improved Uptime

   Your MSP holds a large bench of resources and is under contractual service level agreements with your company. They can address any critical issues immediately, dramatically increasing your uptime.

3. People Cost Savings

   Providing 24×7 support for a single technology requires 4 engineers to rotate around the clock, including weekends and holidays. Introducing an MSP as an extension of your existing team will cost a fraction compared to staffing full-time headcount, not to mention the large pool of expertise an MSP team brings to support your infrastructure.

4. Hardware/Facility Cost Savings

   Using an MSP for cloud services like Security Operations Center-as-a-Service (SOCaaS), Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS), and Backup-as-a-Service (BUaaS) can have substantial cost savings over building your own SOC or a separate Disaster Recovery facility. Power, space, compute, storage, software, maintenance costs, and people management all add up to a cost that may be prohibitive for what you really need to protect your business.

5. Focus on Growth

   A good MSP allows you to free up your internal team to focus on projects that will impact and grow your business instead of triaging issues and extinguishing fires that can be managed by engineers that are specifically trained for this type of work.

6. Global Network of Expertise and Support

   Based on the sheer volume of alerts and errors they encounter with other global clients, MSPs are exposed to a wide range of issues. Additionally, they have formed close partner connections with their original equipment manufacturer (OEM) vendors that allow them to escalate support issues much faster than a single customer could.

7. Infrastructure stability

   By outsourcing to an MSP, businesses can leverage routine optimization services and best practice assessments to help proactively improve the stability and security of the infrastructure. This optimization can come in the form of automation or nightly checks that go beyond the approach for standard IT teams.

8. Cloud Solutions

   MSPs can help provide the expertise needed for complex cloud-based solutions such as Azure, AWS, or Disaster Recovery and Backup services. These services can integrate seamlessly with your on-premise infrastructure to provide a holistic ecosystem of support and security.

9. Extend your 9×5 to 24×7

   A great MSP partner will deliver support as an extension of your team. This support provides 24×7 coverage for your 9×5 staff ensuring your business is running optimally all the time.

10. On-Demand Expertise

    When areas of your business need expertise but may not require a full-time hire, an MSP can provide the fractional expertise time you need. This may be in the form of a staff augmentation, all-inclusive contract, or a retainer for a set number of hours per month. Flexibility is an essential attribute as all customer needs cannot be distilled into a single offering.

ivision believes a valuable managed services provider will be a partner with your company and an extension of your current team. By taking on the operational and security needs, your in-house teams can focus on staying ahead of IT trends and developing a roadmap to grow and help your business reach its goals.

Learn more about ivision’s managed service offerings.