What is Managed Services and How Can It Help Your Business?

Managed services are the practice of outsourcing the responsibility to maintain and anticipate the need for a range of processes and functions, with the aim of improving operations and reducing budget expenditures through the reduction of directly employed staff.

Managed IT

services, or outsourced IT, are third-party services that provide infrastructure, IT, and other technical support to organizations. These companies are also known as MSPs (managed service providers). Managed IT Services help businesses with the daily operation, maintenance and support of their IT needs on an ongoing basis. You need technology that works today, tomorrow and beyond.

Managed services ensure that your IT helps you achieve your business objectives every time. While managed services and outsourcing are often used interchangeably, there are key differences. Managed services are just one style of support under the broad umbrella of outsourced IT. Under the same umbrella are other, more traditional service offerings, such as repair, breakdown repair and short-term repairs, which are still considered outsourcing. When you work with managed service partners, you gain a level of accountability that you normally won't see with outsourced IT vendors.

A managed service provider often offers its service offering under an SLA (Service Level Agreement), a contractual agreement between the MSP and its customer. As you embark on investing in a new application, consider leveraging the various managed service offerings to keep abreast of business IT needs and minimize non-systemic risks. Managed Services can help with large internal projects or offer new strategies to help you develop a powerful and secure IT approach. For example, I recently provided a managed service to a large energy company that found the service to be seamless and significantly improved satisfaction for end users and IT support staff around the world. You may also need additional technology services that are beyond the reach of traditional managed IT. Depending on your organization's future requirements and IT maturity speed, the managed service can be expanded to address these scenarios.

With this type of managed service, a managed IT service provider will remotely assist with the data and file infrastructure. When a managed service provider is requested to meet an organization's business objectives, it is often expected to fill some gap or function in a system or IT staff. Managed IT services are tasks managed by a third party, often in the context of enterprise information technology services. Organizations outsource responsibility for maintaining and anticipating IT needs for a variety of processes and functions to improve operations, reduce costs, and streamline IT management. Managed service providers typically offer packages that fit customers of different sizes with or without in-house IT capabilities. Many modern managed service providers take a more proactive approach to maintenance and management, which may include patch management and predictive maintenance.

Managed IT services mean that an external company manages all of the company's IT requirements. Cloud infrastructure management, one of the most detailed service classifications, addresses computing, storage, networking, and IT. Through a managed IT partnership, you gain access to the diverse skill set that comes with the company you hire.