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Managed IT Services
What are They?
Managed IT services are tasks handled by a third party, frequently in the context of business information technology services. The managed services model is a way to offload general tasks to an expert in order to reduce costs, improve service quality, or free internal teams to do work that’s specific to their business. A managed service provider (MSP) is a company that provides these service offerings.
What is a managed service provider (MSP)?
The third party that delivers services is called a managed service provider. Most often, a managed IT service provider is an IT service provider that proactively manages and takes responsibility for delivering a specific set of business technology services to its clients. The MSP, not the client, determines when services are necessary.
The service provider is responsible for the functionality of the service or equipment, managed under a service level agreement (SLA). The SLA will contain provisions for typical downtime, disaster recovery, technical support, and help desk operations. The customer receiving the service often pays a monthly subscription fee.
Organizations outsource the responsibility for maintaining—and anticipating the IT needs for—a range of processes and functions in order to improve operations, cut expenses, and streamline IT management.
What are the benefits?
Managed IT services are beneficial for both large organizations and small businesses; new companies and established ones. Some of the benefits of using these services include:
Filling the skills gap
These providers can be helpful for teams that lack the time, skills, or experience to manage certain business functions on their own. They’re also valuable for teams that choose to focus their efforts on other initiatives. By relying on an expert to handle these services, your teams can stay focused on innovation. This way, they aren’t bogged down by routine tasks.
Cost savings
Many of these services are tied to variable cloud expenses. These services can save you money on staff and training. Pricing for others is usually included in a fixed monthly charge. Engaging a managed service company instead of building in-house IT operations can be cheaper and the costs can be more predictable, which is helpful for budgeting.
Reliability
You can worry less about outages because the service provider is responsible for keeping the service available at all times. Services and IT support are provided under an SLA, so it is clear what to expect and when to expect it. An in-house IT team is often juggling multiple responsibilities but an MSP can focus on perfecting delivery of their specific service. This means focusing on the health and security of the service, applying patches and upgrades as needed.
What kinds of managed IT services are available?
Managed IT services can range from general to specific, depending on your needs. Common services can include the monitoring and maintenance of equipment, IT systems management, remote monitoring and management of servers, network monitoring, and other support services.
The traditional approach to managed services is a break/fix model which monitors systems until there is a problem to remediate. Many modern managed service providers take a more proactive approach to maintenance and management, which can include patch management and predictive maintenance.
Cloud-based managed services can range from specific applications delivered “as a service” (Software as a Service, or SaaS) to platforms and infrastructure as a service (IaaS and PaaS). These services can help businesses scale rapidly to meet increasing demand without the associated datacenter and IT infrastructure costs. Cloud-based services can also provide greater access to data, analytics, and storage.
Managed IT services also provide managed security services for both traditional bare metal infrastructure and cloud services. Having reliable and trusted security experts is especially important to companies with hybrid cloud infrastructure.
What’s the difference between managed IT and cloud services?
The phrase “managed IT services” sometimes appears alongside other terms like “cloud services,” but what’s the difference?
Vendors manage and deliver cloud services as software offerings to customers on demand. These services generally include vendor management of applications, data, and platforms, but they usually don’t cover management of the customer’s workload. In contrast, managed IT service providers typically include the cloud platform as part of their service.