What To Expect From A Managed IT Solution
Managed IT solutions have become common in organizations of all sizes. If you're exploring managed IT services options, it's good to develop a general set of expectations. Customers can expect a services provider to help in the following 5 areas.
Standards
It's common for businesses to assemble their IT infrastructures piecemeal. While this can produce short-term cost savings, it can create more expensive problems down the road. Eventually, you may have different departments using incompatible software or even versions of the same software.
Typical managed IT solutions impose standardizations. Services providers maintain contracts with major software vendors, and this allows them to deploy many licenses at fair prices. More importantly, they can keep all of these licenses synchronized to the same version. That means you'll never have to worry about someone in-house not being able to open a file you send them.
Wide Deployment
Another advantage of working with managed IT services firms is they can deploy solutions widely. Suppose you want to add an in-house graphic department and make Adobe software available to them. With a managed IT infrastructure in place, it's as simple as asking the administrator to make the software available.
The same capacity for wide deployment is an advantage when it comes to patches, updates, and upgrades. If there's a zero-day patch for a major flaw in an operating system, for example, your services provider can roll it out quickly. No setup on your network will miss it so you don't have to worry about overlooked holes.
Centralization
With a managed infrastructure in place, you can take advantage of greater centralization. You might have a customer relationship database, for example. There will be a central point of access, and that makes it easier to make it available to everyone on your team. Likewise, the system will automatically perform data backups.
Monitoring of Potential Attacks
Especially at small- and medium-sized businesses, it can be hard to monitor a network 24/7. However, a managed IT services provider will have team members and automated software constantly looking for signs of trouble. Network appliances can monitor data coming in and going out for patterns indicative of attacks. They also can block access to critical systems to protect your data.
Stability
Modern managed IT infrastructures use redundant resources to maintain stability. If you're using a single back-office server to store your data, for example, it can upset your whole operation if it goes down. By distributing the load across many machines, managed IT solutions provide greater stability.
For more information, contact a company like KFM Network Consulting.
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