How To Find The Perfect Provider For Your Managed IT

To maintain and keep pace with the ever-changing technological advancements, starting from employing skilled and trained individuals, to Implementing cutting-edge infrastructure and keeping them relevant with technological  advancement adds to a continual cost in a company’s balance sheet. Also, not all businesses want to manage their IT all by themselves;  businesses look for one stop solutions for all their IT needs, a partner who will handle and manage their IT Infrastructure, monitor them and keep them up-to date. While the decision makers can maintain their complete focus on growing their business faster and achieving company goals.. Managed Service Provider companies have created a one stop solution for their clients, helping them utilize their time and resources in achieving  their business goals. With managed IT, businesses can outsource the daunting tasks like Monitoring, maintenance, migrations, data center solution,  security, and cloud deployments, etc. to a trusted third party.

But as we all know, the rapid and continuous change in IT is one of the major challenges. Unlike before, today’s IT departments cannot have one standard technical requirement like a single operating system, basic or fixed computer models and a handful of typical applications… With the introduction of technologically advanced mobile devices, tablets and cloud-based tools; possibilities of managing these mishmash of assets,  their licenses, multiple portals and their accesses have also been introduced; which is quite a challenge and demanding for IT departments.

The Managed IT service providers you are looking for must follow a comprehensive strategy to keep its IT amenities updated, creating a higher standard than any contemporary organizations can ever accomplish in-house. Your provider must give you uninterrupted administration and monitoring 24/7 with end-to-end backing and ensure IT security, business continuity, and all the other aspects that are vital to your IT operating efficiently and securely.

Here is a checklist that you must follow before entrusting your IT to a third party:

1.Specialised IT staff

The IT departments should be your Managed Service Provider staffing as well.

They should be able to redistribute back-end tasks, swiftly switching between technologies, and have dedicated internal technology specialists to monitor overall growth.

2.Keeps pace with the demands

Your provider should be able to cope up with the demand of your IT infra positions, particularly in terms of cyber-security and mobile app development scenarios with technically professional  teams and experienced engineers who mitigates burden.

3.Provides you better and flexible scalability

When a retailer suddenly expands around the holidays, or a startup faces unexpected development or any such situation that requires upgrading or downgrading your infrastructure; your provider should be flexible and support the elasticity of your requirements right from the word go! 

4.Available 24/7 | 365 days

When you work nonstop; your managed IT partner should be able to keep everything smooth and running round the clock. Your business needs a managed services provider who is always accessible — days, evenings, weekends or festivals — to help you.

5. Offloading the burden of compliance

Organizations are obliged to maintain compliance standards like HIPPA, PCI DSS, GDPR etc.. and meet requirements with their IT initiatives. Your MSP should not only understand the organization and its obligations regarding all these regulations they  should be able to deliver necessary systems, support and report to help them meet the compliance standards.

6. Monthly cost Estimations

Your IT partner can accommodate satisfactory systems, adequate storage, and complete security. They should prepare staff, deploy systems and upkeep the equipment without any unforeseen expenses. 

Lastly, ensure that you find a Managed Service Provider that improves your IT operations too. Here are three points you need to consider:

1. Your provider needs to understand your organizational goals and make suggestions to improve your IT and Security posture based on your requirements.

2. Your provider should be in a position to explain how they are going to help you meet your objectives and/or provide reports that will help your business take an informed decision.

3. It is not just about today, technology is all about the future and your provider needs to be able to provide support for everything that you have today and to help you build an infrastructure that you need for tomorrow.  

Another factor to consider is the breadth of partnership that your provider has with the vendors & expansiveness of experience. Many service providers only emphasize on niche areas, therefore with the pace of innovation, they cannot manage and maintain an additional accomplice to address an organization’s upgrade necessities on a continuous basis. 

When your business must keep-up with the ever-changing world of information technology, you must explore for the right IT service provider. Calculate their years of experience, find their type of industry expertise, and make sure to have a summary of your business needs in hand.