What Are Managed Services, Anyways?
What Are Managed IT Services?
As technology has improved over time, our capabilities to use it to our advantage have progressed. Not only has the technology itself become better, we are able to make use of what is available to us better and more intelligently.
This has allowed managed services to develop out of a need to keep this valuable technology running effectively. Rather than waiting for a business to experience some IT issue and report it, an IT provider can now remotely monitor a business’ IT infrastructure and proactively resolve these issues, ideally avoiding any adverse effects of them.
This means daily operations are interrupted less frequently, allowing more work to be done as a result.
Furthermore, managed IT services are able to help your business with all of its technology-related needs, not just its emergency issues. Updates, installations, and various other maintenance tasks can all be handled by a managed service provider, without requiring you to worry about it.
Managed Services Offer Additional Benefits
When compared side-by-side, there are a few additional reasons that businesses have increasingly embraced managed services as an approach to their IT support.
- Less disruptive. Few things are as distracting as a stranger coming into your place of work and spending time there, which is precisely what the conventional form of IT services once relied upon. The primarily remote nature of managed IT solutions eliminates most of the need for an onsite visit, keeping the rest of your employees from being distracted by the presence of a stranger in the office.
- More efficient. Speaking of a stranger coming to your place of work, how much time have you spent waiting for your IT resource to arrive? This is time that you otherwise could have spent doing something productive. By eliminating the time difference that the technician would have spent traveling (which you may have found yourself billed for), the remote management aspect of a managed service provider’s services means you aren’t left waiting around for as long, which means you can get back down to business much more quickly.
- More cost-effective. Historically, IT services have been famously expensive. You have the issue itself, which (depending on the nature of the issue) could require some significant repairs or replacement of components. Plus, there are the impacts on your business that we touched on above – like the disruption to your office and the downtime incurred waiting around for the tech to arrive – that you also need to consider. On top of that, this is all charged on a per-case basis, so if multiple issues pop up in rapid succession, you could easily find yourself far in the red, with no insurance against any other issues that could soon pop up.
Where to Find Managed Services
If you’re interested in finding out more about the benefits that managed services can bring, don’t hesitate to call Macatawa Technologies. As one of the best managed service providers in West Michigan, we can help you be sure that your business’ technology is operating to the best of its ability, allowing you to direct your focus on the operations this technology enables.
Give us a call at 616-394-4940 to talk to one of our professionals today.