The Buzz Around Managed Services

The new IT trend aimed at reducing cost and worry for business owners

In this “do-more-with-less” economy, many organizations have struggled with cutting costs while maintaining, or even increasing outputs. There’s no question that a key piece of that equation now exists in a business’s IT investments and capabilities. Venturing into cloud storage or virtualized environments may not mean much to an associate whose company provides legal services, for example. But, it’s a necessary direction for any organization that plans to compete in a technology-driven world where end users expect up-to-date-standards of information management.

Technology is an integral part of business today, and there is no way to separate IT services from business services. For some organizations, namely in health care, it’s not a matter of just updating software, but adapting to a regulated standard of managing information.

HealthIT.gov provides a snapshot of ongoing legislation that sets “the standards and certification criteria electronic health records (ERH) must meet to assure health care professionals and hospitals that the systems they adopt are capable of performing certain functions.” (HealthIT.gov)

Many business leaders have quickly learned that, while providing a top-notch IT infrastructure is important and often mandatory, maintaining that infrastructure is not cheap. Further, funding a staff to manage that infrastructure quickly makes an internal IT department a deep cost center.

In the end, cost cutting leads to a middle-of-the-road approach. “Managing IT infrastructure often falls on a small group of inexperienced in-house technicians, or the associate who ‘knows computers.’ Companies willing to invest in the biggest and best when it comes to hardware or software often fail to grow an internal IT staff to scale. The result is a struggle to keep up with gaps and use the investment to its fullest potential,” says Network Engineer, Jeff Blount.

Today, many projects are completely outsourced or collaboratively managed by another IT support provider that can deliver those same services around-the-clock, and often for less than the cost of an in-house specialist.

A key factor to those managed services…“Automation,” says Blount. In fact, an article published in February, 2014 by Information Age, claims nearly 85% of an IT department’s budget is spent “just keeping the lights on.” The cost of day-to-day operations often impedes an organizations ability to up-scale, update, or grow their IT infrastructure.

From 24-hour network monitoring, to hardware and software procurement, utilizing managed services allows businesses to let go of the worry around their IT needs and focus on their customers, products, and services. When we decided to offer managed services as a solution for our customers at Cobb Technologies, we wanted to focus on many of these issues by standardizing a company’s network on our Technology Stack.

With CobbCare interested businesses appreciate our ability to design a custom network that will meet their needs, while increasing productivity, providing data security with disaster recovery, and business continuity. As more and more businesses evolve into complicated IT requirements, there are really two choices: adapt or don’t.

Managed services are a matter of proactively being prepared for problems vs. reactively approaching IT needs from day to day. For a company that relies on reactive, break-fix solutions, their equipment can be down for a much as 24 hours while they wait for parts or services. That can be an eternity for many organizations resulting in a loss of productivity and possibly business.

The proactive approach can offer as little or as much as the business needs. Investing in managed services frees-up the organization to focus forward, rather than down. That decision is key to a businesses ability to adapt and grow.

By: David DiGiacomo

VP of Sales, Development and Business Solutions

Cobb Technologies

ddigiacomo@cobbtechnologies.com