Among small and medium-sized businesses looking to reduce their technology costs, “Out-Sourcing” has become an increasingly attractive option. Rather than managing their network themselves, these companies are hiring network managed service providers to handle it for them. While this might seem at first glance to be a needless expense, it actually offers a number of cost-saving opportunities.
According to Cisco, these sorts of network managed services can ultimately save businesses up to 25% of their IT budget. In fact, almost half (48%) of the companies they surveyed said they were using managed services specifically for the cost savings, on top of the other benefits.
Let’s briefly look at some of the top ways that out-sourcing network management can reduce your costs:
Four Cost-Saving Features of Network Managed Services
- All day, every day monitoring: A Managed Service Provider will be working for you twenty-four hours a day, three-sixty-five days a year. Using sophisticated software which pro-actively watches the health of critical equipment and services running your business. No matter what time a crisis hits, you could have a team ready to resolve it as soon as it happens. Trying to maintain that level of support with an in-house IT crew is an expensive proposition.
- Improved productivity: That level of pro-active support means that your network will be more reliable and your employees will suffer less downtime as a result of network outages. BytesOfKnowledge has an excellent chart how costly downtimes are to a business.
- Predictable costs: You pay a flat fee for your network services every month, making your IT budget far more stable and easy to plan around. These flat-rate plans can even include hardware replacement, taking much of the guesswork out of budgeting.
- Focusing on your core business: Unless you are in the IT business, network management is outside of your field. Why have employees who aren’t contributing to your core business and on your customers? Out-Sourcing network management takes the infrastructure burden off your shoulders, allowing you and your team members to focus on what’s really important: Your Business!.
All in all, network managed services are an attractive alternative for businesses looking to maintain a modern computer network that boosts productivity, while still keeping their budget low.
Photo Credit: JHritz