Work-from-home models have enabled companies to remain productive and profitable over the past year. However, remote work also creates IT challenges.
Almost all (94 percent) of business leaders surveyed by Wakefield Research last year said that remote work technology issues had affected employees and the business. The most common problems included technical disruptions (37 percent), lost productivity (37 percent) and difficulty engaging with customers (37 percent).
Many IT teams face an overwhelming number of support tickets, along with an explosion of new devices accessing the network. Ensuring the performance, availability and security of IT services is increasingly difficult, particularly when IT lacks complete visibility across today’s geographically distributed environment.
Managed services can help organizations overcome the IT challenges associated with remote work. In a traditional model, a managed services provider (MSP) remotely monitors the IT infrastructure and handles day-to-day maintenance, security updates and help desk support.
Enterprise-class MSPs offer a comprehensive array of services, from IT service management (ITSM) to data protection to cloud management. They help guide organizations through the adoption of new business-enabling technologies, and leverage automated tools to streamline operations. Working in concert with the customer’s IT team, they help enable the continuous optimization of the IT environment.
Redefining ‘Managed Services’
These capabilities are especially powerful as organizations continue to modernize their IT infrastructure to meet changing requirements. MSPs bring to bear a suite of tools that enable the delivery of next-generation technologies in an IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) model.
ITaaS should not be confused with the cloud. The ITaaS provider tailors specialized offerings to the specific needs of the business, and adds a management layer that ensures ongoing performance, availability and security. Like the cloud, ITaaS includes scalable, standardized services, often with high degrees of automation. However, it emphasizes operational efficiency through ITSM and best practices.
At this level, managed services look beyond design (Day 0) and implementation (Day 1) to ongoing monitoring, maintenance and optimization (Day 2). This helps organizations minimize the risk that new initiatives will stall due to a lack of resources for long-term operation and support. The MSP oversees the rollout and operation from end to end, working in partnership with the organization’s in-house IT team to maximize the return on the technology investment.
Because ITaaS operates on a cloud-like model, it also helps organizations conserve capital and wrap solutions and services into an opex spend. Customers are charged on a consumption basis, with the MSP acting as a broker of IT services that are orchestrated and managed across their lifecycle.
Turnkey Solutions
In addition to ITaaS, a qualified MSP can deliver turnkey solutions that enable customers to offload common IT pain points. Desktop-as-a-Service eliminates the headaches associated with the procurement, rollout and support of end-user devices. Backup-as-a-Service, Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service and Business-Continuity-as-a-Service help ensure data protection and IT resilience without the operational overhead of traditional solutions.
Monitoring-as-a-Service and ITSM-as-a-Service provide the visibility and discipline needed for continuous improvement of service delivery. Best-in-class MSPs enable the adoption of advanced DevOps practices and automated incident management for rapid resolution of critical events.
Through our Technology Operations Centers and third-party partners, Technologent provides customized managed services that ensure seamless delivery of next-generation solutions. Each solution is backed by our expert support and advanced toolsets that extend performance throughout the IT distributed environment.
At Technologent, we view managed services as a turnkey solution that incorporates the people, processes and technology needed to operate advanced IT solutions. Let us show you how Technologent’s managed services can help you address today’s remote work challenges and prepare for the future.
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