As a business owner, you’ve probably heard the term “managed IT” more times than you can count, but there’s still a good chance that you don’t know what it really means or even how expert managed IT can help your business succeed. Below, you can learn more about what managed IT really means – and what it could mean for your business, too.
The Definition of Managed Services
By its very definition, the term “managed services” refers to a business offloading many of its operations to an outside provider. Instead of the business owner constantly monitoring and managing his or her network and the other IT systems driving his or her business, the managed service provider handles it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For small business owners without the ability to hire a dedicated IT team, or for those who have a need to maintain an IT infrastructure but who only have a few employees, managed IT services can be a huge boon.
Why Businesses Choose Managed IT
Today’s businesses choose managed IT services for a wide variety of reasons, but ultimately, it has to do with a company’s need to have access to the latest technology in order to operate with any degree of efficiency. What’s more, companies that do not have access to the latest technology tend to fall behind their competitors; without modern IT, they simply cannot connect, collect data, and process data in such a way that allows them to maintain relevant in any industry at all.
Business owners also find themselves busy – incredibly busy – and unable to keep up with the routine maintenance that goes into IT. They forget to run backups as frequently as they should, and they may forget about downloading the latest security fixes and patches designed to keep their data (and their customers’ data) safe. As a result, these businesses are at risk of losing access to things like financial applications, email servers, and other things that are critical for everyday operations.
Managed IT is Not a Break-Fix Service
Finally, it is important for all business owners to remember that managed IT is not a classic “break-fix” service. This means that it is not a service you employ when something goes wrong; rather, it is a service you employ to prevent something from going wrong in the first place. In today’s connected world, losing your connection for even a few hours can lead to unrecoverable business issues. Rather than waiting for something to happen, then calling an IT professional to resolve it while your business suffers significant downtime, managed IT support is always there, always watching, and always protecting your data and your network.
With managed IT support, business owners can stop worrying about things like backups, security patches, and even the latest antivirus definitions. By offloading these operations to an outside company that specializes in IT infrastructure and security management, business owners can spend less time with these simple but time-consuming tasks and more time running their businesses the way they originally intended.
