One of the most important choices facing today’s businesses is whether to outsource technology, keep everything in-house, or adopt a blend of the two.
Technology is evolving at a pace that many businesses have a hard time keeping up with. Yet it’s also the backbone of any modern organization, to the extent that failing to innovate severely hinders the ability to grow in an increasingly competitive environment. Even plenty of once-big global enterprises, including household brand names, have disappeared in recent years as more agile startups empowered by modern technology have taken over.
One of the most important choices facing today’s businesses is whether to outsource technology, keep everything in-house, or adopt a blend of the two. For smaller organizations, keeping IT entirely in-house isn’t a practical option due to the necessity for round-the-clock monitoring and management. To alleviate these challenges, many smaller companies outsource some or all of their technology infrastructure.
Here are five reasons why:
1. Innovate faster
It’s nearly impossible to stay at the bleeding edge of technology and keep up with the fast pace of today’s market if you’re trying to manage everything in-house. Running a fully equipped IT department is enormously expensive, and if the necessary resources aren’t available, your employees could end up working overtime on projects they’re ill-equipped to deal with. By having your computing infrastructure managed by a third party, you can enjoy access to a practically unlimited pool of resources on demand. This helps you scale faster and innovate without your team facing the risk of burnout.
2. Boost security
While most businesses don’t operate around the clock, that doesn’t mean hackers are taking breaks on nights and weekends. Cyber-criminals can strike at any time, routinely going after easy targets that lack enterprise-grade protection like small businesses. With chief information security officers and other executive-level information security staff commanding six-figure salaries, building a robust security infrastructure in-house is well beyond the capabilities of smaller organizations. Outsourcing can provide access to cutting-edge security solutions that are expertly managed 24/7.
3. Reduce downtime
Extended periods of unscheduled downtime can cost businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars every hour in lost customers and reduced productivity. Hardware failure, for example, can take days to resolve if you’re reliant on traditional break/fix support. Managed IT services providers (MSPs) proactively manage and secure your IT systems. They also give access to cloud-hosted resources in secure, cutting-edge data centers complete with redundancies and automatic rollovers to drastically reduce downtime, if not eliminate it altogether. They are also legally bound by their service level agreements (SLAs) to provide a minimum degree of service availability and maximum response times to support queries.
4. Recover quickly
Having the entirety of your IT infrastructure exclusively implemented and maintained in-house is a perfect example of putting all your eggs in one basket. A ransomware attack, natural disaster, or severe hardware failure might be all it takes to cripple your business. A dependable cloud provider, on the other hand, stores data in at least three separate physical locations. MSPs often include backup and disaster recovery (BDR) as an integral part of their service packages. Not only does this greatly reduce the financial risk to your organization, but it also helps simplify regulatory compliance and business continuity.
5. Control expenses
Perhaps the biggest overarching incentive for partnering with an MSP is that it reduces costs substantially. Aside from doing away with the huge costs of running an in-house IT department, there are many indirect savings as well. Improved service availability, ease of use, and practically unlimited scalability all mean happier customers and more productive employees, both of which have a knock-on effect on your bottom line. What’s more, managed IT services are more predictable in terms of cost, which makes budgeting easier and eliminates the unpleasant surprises associated with in-house upgrades and break/fix support.
