IT Managed Services

Managed IT Services

Managed IT services is a way to outsource the day-to-day management of your information technology needs.

A Managed Service Provider (MSP) can supplement your in-house IT department or become your IT department, depending on your business goals, internal IT savvy, and budget.

A MSP is essentially your IT department. Managed IT Services proactively manages information technology assets on behalf of a customer. This differs from traditional IT which is a reactive service built around a break and fix model.

Managed service providers seek to prevent your IT infrastructure from breaking – providing your employees with continual access to the tools they need to do their jobs. Partnering with an MSP allows small and medium businesses to run their business on technology that would be beyond their budgets as a capital investment.

A great MSP will be a real partner for a business, helping to identify how IT can be used to best achieve a company’s overall goals. IT becomes a strategic asset, not a cost center.

There are various levels of service that an MSP can provide, from network monitoring and alerts that a company will then fix internally to full-fledged monitoring and problem resolution. Whether you have business offices in Las Vegas, San Diego or Southern California, here at AIS, our IT managed services come as an all-in-one bundle.

The Challenge of Managing Networks

Of course, it is possible for companies to manage their own networks – sometimes even cost-effectively. Even so, there are opportunity costs from devoting resources into internal maintenance of a service that you could outsource (and thereby freeing budget to focus on more revenue-generating IT initiatives). Here are only a few common challenges of network management done in-house.

Reducing network overhead costs while increasing network services
Supporting dynamic business growth with restricted budgets and staffing levels
Needing to respond quickly to time-to-market demands
Implementing new technologies to maintain competitiveness
Supporting new business operations and markets or integrating acquisition
Managing, maintaining, and upgrading network infrastructure and management systems
Delivering high-quality, high-availability network services to meet 24-hour demand
If your office has voice over IP, ensuring that voice traffic and call quality have sufficient priority
Securing data, transactions, and communications to keep up with the latest security threats, as well as meeting privacy and security regulations
Delivering services to more remote offices and workers
Finding, recruiting, and retaining certified network professionals
Helping staff stay current with new technologies and skills

What Is included in Outsourced IT Support?

Common elements included in a managed network services partnership include:

Day-to-day help desk support
Data Recovery
Backup
Network Management and security
- Network security is a constantly shifting target as hacker techniques evolve and are countered. Companies that don’t have enough resources to dedicate to network security are even more at risk of a security breach (or breaches).
Email security
- Block spam, phishing scams, malware, and other inappropriate email content before it can get inside of your network.
Reporting
- Detailed reporting allows you to see the applications and personnel taking up the majority of your network resources. Monitoring also provides insight into traffic bottlenecks and peak periods so that you can add more capacity when needed and prevent your employees from becoming frustrated.

The MSP Business Advantage

Yes, you’ll save money by moving from a break/fix model of addressing your IT infrastructure to a managed IT services arrangement. But there are advantages beyond simply saving money:

Predictable budgeting – one set fee for services

Access to leading network technologies and management expertise, without high capital expenditures or ongoing investments in upgrades, IT staffing, and maintenance resources

One point of contact for vendor management simplifies trying to identify who is responsible for issues and vendor management

Proactive management of the network allows preventative maintenance of equipment as well as immediate notification of fault

Free your internal IT staff from network support so they can focus on strategic projects

Service level agreements (SLAs) guarantee predictable response and resolution times for network problems and establish what is and isn’t covered in the relationship