It has been six months since the global health crisis invoked government-mandated “shelter-in-place.” Yet many organizations that scrambled to standup hundreds of work-from-home offices are…
When an IT department experiences growing networking and resource demands, it generally has two ways to approach it: staff up or outsource.
But for small IT departments, rapidly scaling personnel and resources is extremely cost prohibitive. Hiring just one highly skilled team member can be difficult and time-consuming.
Because of this, many small IT departments are turning to managed IT services for help. Today, we’re taking a deep dive into why that is a key element of their strategy.
But first…
Managed IT services are when a business outsources part or all of their IT task to a managed services provider (MSP). By partnering with a third-party vendor, a business can hand off their routine IT activities to an expert, which frees up in-house IT staff to focus on mission-critical activities such as new project initiatives and delivering better customer experiences.
Managed IT services cover a wide range of offerings, including but not limited to:
Now let’s take a look at how they can help.
#1 Staff Augmentation
The most powerful benefit of managed services for small IT departments is that it frees up internal IT staff by outsourcing tasks and responsibilities.
But unlike many common perceptions about outsourcing, partnering with an MSP doesn’t necessarily involve outsourcing your entire IT functions to a vendor. Rather, managed IT services augment the internal staff you already have with additional resources and skills. This “team extension” relationship helps in three ways.
First, MSPs can relieve the pressure of routine maintenance, upkeep and monitoring functions that take up so much time. This allows your internal staff to focus on other critical projects that have a higher priority.
Second, MSPs can take on the responsibility of delivering outcome-based service level agreements. With full visibility into all branch IT environments, they can watch the health of your network and make real-time adjustments to ensure it performs efficiently.
Third, managed services make your IT department rapidly scalable. Access to certified engineers is helpful when you need a burst of technical expertise or help with ramping up for digital transformation projects.
#2 Keeping Up with IT Trends
Technology changes fast. If you work in a small IT department, keeping up with the latest trends can feel like a full-time job on top of the responsibilities you already have.
It’s easy for an organization to fall behind, and if it happens, it could be costly and even dangerous.
Take security, for example. Securing your business against cyberattacks is essential. The average cost of a data breach is $3.86 million. The problem is, cyberattacks change constantly. Hackers continuously create new strains of attacks to stay ahead of defenses. Ransomware, for example, comes in hundreds of variants.
Keeping up with cyber threats is time-consuming, but it’s essential to maintaining your network defenses. Managed security works to solve this problem by proactively monitoring the security integrity of your infrastructure and providing an ironclad, multi-tier defense to reduce intrusion risks.
MSPs are often more in tune to current security trends and developments in technology. Because of this, managed services can help your IT department keep up with modern cyber security issues without sinking a ton of time into research or costly solutions.
#3 Preventative Monitoring
While monitoring is technically its own managed service, it deserves special mention for what it can do for a small IT department. Monitoring is a 24/7/365 job that focuses on monitoring your network and preventing issues before they happen. This makes it a critical yet resource-intensive task that even larger IT teams don’t have the time or interest to manage.
Preventative monitoring using a managed solution improves performance by identifying and fixing system issues before they disrupt your organizational business.
#4 Increased Uptime, Minimized Downtime
Downtime – even for brief periods – has a devastating effect on an organization’s productivity and expenses. It’s easy to see why: the average cost of downtime is $300k per hour. Managed IT services can help increase uptime by providing software-defined networking with dynamic traffic steering and error-correcting technologies to minimize downtime and improve network performance. In addition, unified communications bring anywhere, anytime connections for branch locations and remote users that dramatically improve productivity across the organization.
For small IT departments, keeping up with growing networking and security demands can prove to be a challenge. If this is you, it might be time to augment your team with the right managed services partner.
Mike Penn joined Magna5 as Senior Content Developer. His role is to bring to life stories that inspire or inject clarity in how managed services and emerging trends can be applied to help organizations operate better and more efficiently.
Protect your MS365 accounts from data breaches and unauthorized access with these six essential security defense measures.
FRISCO, Texas, January 11, 2021 (Newswire.com) – Magna5, a national provider of managed IT, voice and connectivity services, is pleased to announce Moussa Paye …
Through actionable Dark Web ID intelligence, Magna5 can let you know ahead of time if cybercriminals already have the keys to access your network.
When an IT department experiences growing networking and resource demands, it generally has two ways to approach it: staff up or outsource.
But for small IT departments, rapidly scaling personnel and resources is extremely cost prohibitive. Hiring just one highly skilled team member can be difficult and time-consuming.
Because of this, many small IT departments are turning to managed IT services for help. Today, we’re taking a deep dive into why that is a key element of their strategy.
But first…
Managed IT services are when a business outsources part or all of their IT task to a managed services provider (MSP). By partnering with a third-party vendor, a business can hand off their routine IT activities to an expert, which frees up in-house IT staff to focus on mission-critical activities such as new project initiatives and delivering better customer experiences.
Managed IT services cover a wide range of offerings, including but not limited to:
Now let’s take a look at how they can help.
#1 Staff Augmentation
The most powerful benefit of managed services for small IT departments is that it frees up internal IT staff by outsourcing tasks and responsibilities.
But unlike many common perceptions about outsourcing, partnering with an MSP doesn’t necessarily involve outsourcing your entire IT functions to a vendor. Rather, managed IT services augment the internal staff you already have with additional resources and skills. This “team extension” relationship helps in three ways.
First, MSPs can relieve the pressure of routine maintenance, upkeep and monitoring functions that take up so much time. This allows your internal staff to focus on other critical projects that have a higher priority.
Second, MSPs can take on the responsibility of delivering outcome-based service level agreements. With full visibility into all branch IT environments, they can watch the health of your network and make real-time adjustments to ensure it performs efficiently.
Third, managed services make your IT department rapidly scalable. Access to certified engineers is helpful when you need a burst of technical expertise or help with ramping up for digital transformation projects.
#2 Keeping Up with IT Trends
Technology changes fast. If you work in a small IT department, keeping up with the latest trends can feel like a full-time job on top of the responsibilities you already have.
It’s easy for an organization to fall behind, and if it happens, it could be costly and even dangerous.
Take security, for example. Securing your business against cyberattacks is essential. The average cost of a data breach is $3.86 million. The problem is, cyberattacks change constantly. Hackers continuously create new strains of attacks to stay ahead of defenses. Ransomware, for example, comes in hundreds of variants.
Keeping up with cyber threats is time-consuming, but it’s essential to maintaining your network defenses. Managed security works to solve this problem by proactively monitoring the security integrity of your infrastructure and providing an ironclad, multi-tier defense to reduce intrusion risks.
MSPs are often more in tune to current security trends and developments in technology. Because of this, managed services can help your IT department keep up with modern cyber security issues without sinking a ton of time into research or costly solutions.
#3 Preventative Monitoring
While monitoring is technically its own managed service, it deserves special mention for what it can do for a small IT department. Monitoring is a 24/7/365 job that focuses on monitoring your network and preventing issues before they happen. This makes it a critical yet resource-intensive task that even larger IT teams don’t have the time or interest to manage.
Preventative monitoring using a managed solution improves performance by identifying and fixing system issues before they disrupt your organizational business.
#4 Increased Uptime, Minimized Downtime
Downtime – even for brief periods – has a devastating effect on an organization’s productivity and expenses. It’s easy to see why: the average cost of downtime is $300k per hour. Managed IT services can help increase uptime by providing software-defined networking with dynamic traffic steering and error-correcting technologies to minimize downtime and improve network performance. In addition, unified communications bring anywhere, anytime connections for branch locations and remote users that dramatically improve productivity across the organization.
For small IT departments, keeping up with growing networking and security demands can prove to be a challenge. If this is you, it might be time to augment your team with the right managed services partner.
Mike Penn joined Magna5 as Senior Content Developer. His role is to bring to life stories that inspire or inject clarity in how managed services and emerging trends can be applied to help organizations operate better and more efficiently.
Protect your MS365 accounts from data breaches and unauthorized access with these six essential security defense measures.
FRISCO, Texas, January 11, 2021 (Newswire.com) – Magna5, a national provider of managed IT, voice and connectivity services, is pleased to announce Moussa Paye …
Through actionable Dark Web ID intelligence, Magna5 can let you know ahead of time if cybercriminals already have the keys to access your network.
It has been six months since the global health crisis invoked government-mandated “shelter-in-place.” Yet many organizations that scrambled to standup hundreds of work-from-home offices are…
“I’m about to go ballistic! Our SLAs are falling short. We’re experiencing more frequent network downtime. Our vendor is monitoring and sending us alerts but…
Do you have a trust deficit with your existing managed IT services provider? Are you confident they are taking care of your network? Is juggling…
Driving Responsiveness – Agility Series (Part Five) Whether or not your organization made the government’s cut as ‘essential workers’ during the coronavirus pandemic, we…
Driving Responsiveness – Agility Series (Part Four) Recognize this? “Jason is the kind of guy who’s always in a state of readiness. He likes…
Recently, the Enterprise Networking Magazine’s editorial board selected Magna5 as one of its Top 10 SD-WAN Solution Providers for 2020. The magazine evaluates and selects…
Driving Responsiveness – Agility Series (Part Three) By default, playing it safe during a downturn can hurt your chances to thrive in a stronger…
Driving Responsiveness – Agility Series (Part Two) During a business downturn, it is important to go beyond just surviving and position your organization as a…
Driving Responsiveness – Agility Series (Part One) Rather than tapping the brakes during the COVID-19 business lockdowns, many organizations are accelerating growth by reaching out…
It has been open season for cyber threat actors targeting organizations’ endpoints during the COVID-19 epidemic. With a large percentage of employees now working from…
Recently, MyTechMag editorial board selected Magna5 as one of its Top 10 Promising Disaster Recovery Solutions Providers for 2020. The magazine evaluates and selects solution…
By 2025, contact centers will morph into experience hubs and how they perform will be placed more clearly within the context of the overall performance…
Every day, cyber criminals bombard networks with phishing emails or social engineering enticing users to give up confidential information. Examples include trying to trick you…
With the rise of the remote worker operating model, it doesn’t take long to discover that a distributed workforce depends upon high network performance and…
It is bad enough that cyber criminals relentlessly breach organizations’ networks with malware and ransomware to hold their data hostage. Now they are going a…
Unified Communications has been around for a while. But during the recent nationwide pandemic lockdown, the dynamics of communicating from any place, on any device,…
Hackers are leveraging ransomware and other malware through phishing lures, malware distribution and domain registration tied to COVID-19. Common themes include scamming, brand impersonation, blackmail…
The ripple effect of a major global health crisis can have a profound impact on organizational operations. As we’ve seen with the recent coronavirus outbreak,…
IT monitoring and management services offer organizations a way to improve security and network uptime without burdening internal IT teams. In this post, we’ll review…
SD-WAN in healthcare is changing how hospitals, medical offices and clinics care for patients. Here are four ways healthcare organizations are reaping the rewards. SD-WAN…
Federally Qualified Health Centers are community-based health care providers who provide a vital link to primary and preventive healthcare services in underserved communities. Dependable communications…
We’ve heard the saying: “Expect the unexpected.” But do businesses really take it seriously? Last October, weathermen cautioned residents in the Dallas area of pending…
In our last two blog posts, we discussed how to “OWN IT” and “SECURE IT.” Today, continuing our National Cybersecurity Awareness Month series, Be Cyber…
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is working on final rules to enable true national number portability on a nationwide basis. When implemented, it will enable complete national number porting…
Imagine getting to work and seeing an invoice from your voice provider that your company ran up a $122,000 phone bill in a single weekend!…
By 2021, a new business will be victimized by ransomware every 11 seconds. Even with strong security controls in place, your organization still has a…
Toll-free least cost routing helps organizations find the best path between caller and destination at the lowest available cost. Here’s why it matters. Toll-Free…
SD-WAN with Magna5 offers three popular deployment models to fit the needs of your organization – on-premises, hybrid and cloud application. Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) is…
Roughly 40-60% of midsize businesses never reopen after a disaster. But, with the right disaster recovery and business continuity plan in place, the damage can…
Over the past five years, security breaches have increased by 67%, according to Accenture’s global survey. Traditional security is in trouble. As threat actors deploy…
An effective IT monitoring and management strategy helps organizations protect precious uptime to eliminate downtime situations. Every company’s network and server structure are different. Some…
SD-WAN is revolutionizing networking by improving how businesses connect. But before hopping on the SD-WAN train, you need to decide whether you want to manage…
Healthcare providers are finally hopping on the managed SD-WAN train – and telehealth is driving it. In this post, we’ll look at five ways s…
If you’ve ever seen your area code on the caller ID, only to be greeted by a pre-recorded voice message promising to erase your credit…
SD-WAN is the new buzz word these days. Do you fully understand how it can positively impact your business? Managed SD-WAN can bring benefits and…
As you see in the video, sometimes network complexity can make you want to go back to the antiquated days of pen and paper. However,…
Deliver high quality voice and application performance over SD-WAN for your employees, nationwide. Organizations utilize Unified Communications to bridge the gap between multiple locations and…
Every organization is liable for the information it keeps. In a data-driven world, company records and information are everywhere … in servers, in storage, on…
Traditional WAN is out of date. SD-WAN can make your network agile and efficient with the cloud. Almost every IT and business leader today is…
Simplify your branch office network with optimized application performance using SD-WAN Today’s enterprise IT has become more sophisticated and bandwidth intensive, creating a complex and…
Companies are increasingly moving IT workloads to the cloud, but are they doing it at the risk of exposing themselves to a data breach? Multiple…
Lots of companies are moving IT workloads to the public cloud, but is this the right strategy for your business? I’m sure you’re aware by…
Disasters hit every organization sooner or later. The cloud, combined with reliable partners, makes recovering from disasters easier than ever before. Disasters have a tendency…
Simplify your Enterprise communications with Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) in the cloud. Enterprise businesses are constantly struggling with communication challenges. Traditionally, business phone…
Secured business communications mean better connections to your customers. UCaaS (Unified Communications) ensures your security with features like encryption, business continuity, and 24/7/365 support. Security…
Improve customer satisfaction and the customer experience with a hosted UC and Cloud Contact Center solution. One of the many exciting things happening at Magna5…
Managing your network can be hard, but it doesn’t have to be – that’s why Magna5 now offers Cloud Managed Network. Experience feature-rich benefits and…
Reduce Costs, Increase Uptime and Improve Performance A network operations center (NOC) is the heart of an IT managed services provider – monitoring, managing and responding…
Enhance collaboration to increase productivity and save money Being able to easily connect with your customers, vendors, and fellow employees is key. Without it, employees…
What is SD-WAN? Combined with UCaaS, it’s the future for small businesses in 2018 Unified communications, delivered as a service (UCaaS) from the cloud, is…
A fast, flexible data recovery system not only saves thousands – it could save your business. Business Data Loss can be the result of anything…
Businesses today either evolve or get left behind. We see organizations of all sizes that were once successful, now losing customers because they have not…
As business pushes the limits of IT availability, productivity and efficiency, the importance of reliable IT operations continues to be apparent. Small- and medium-sized organizations…
Interested in finding a Managed Service Provider for your network needs?
Would you like to find out more information about Magna5? Whatever your need, reach out!
