Managed Services
What are Managed Services?
The term Managed Services refers to strategic outsourcing of day-to-day IT management responsibilities such as desktop management, security management, network management, , usually motivatd by a desire to managed costs and free up internal resources. In today's modern enterprises running on finite budgets, maintenance and support of IT solutions can easily consume a considerable chunk of IT budget. Opting for Managed Services means outsourcing some or all IT functions to preferred partners to help control costs, ensure greater reliability of systems and reducing potential risks.
Outsourcing and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) are closely related to Managed Services and Managed Services differs only on the ground that it is actually selective outsourcing.
Benefits of Managed Services
Focussing on core competencies is the key to survival and growth of modern enterprises. Choosing Managed Services over in-house IT services for non-core IT functions, frees up the valuable internal technical resources as well as capital investments so that they can be invested in development of core activities. It also implies that capital investment on general IT solutions required for in house management of such responsibilities is saved or rather converted to operational costs. With the 24/7 support given by Managed Services providers, the reliability of the system is maintained.
Most Managed Services Providers charge a fixed monthly fee based on certain parameters e.g. the number of desktops to be managed in desktop management services; or the number of dedicated servers to be hosted in a secure data centre or perhaps the number of managed firewalls and security policies protecting your online assets etc. This fixed management cost helps in budgeting and expense tracking. Also, Managed Services are almost always non standard and the providers take time to study your business needs and future plans to come up with a customised solution, optimised as per your specifications, and this too dictates the fee they will charge.
Using Managed Services can be a smart way to run a business efficiently and reliably which translates into peace of mind for business owners. It should be looked upon more as a ‘partnership’ rather than simple outsourcing and hence, choosing the right ‘partner’ will determine the benefits you reap from Managed Services.
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