Before we dive into the world of managed IT services, let’s explain what managed services are and why businesses—small, medium, and large alike—choose to use them. Managed services are what is commonly known as outsourcing—taking a role or service that your company needs and hiring a third party to handle it for you, rather than hiring an employee in-house. 

Shopping malls outsource their security, major office complexes outsource their landscaping, and hundreds of thousands of businesses outsource their IT services to a managed IT services provider. Xvand  IT Services in Houston, a seasoned IT services firm, has been in business for nearly twenty-five years. 

Why Outsource Your IT Services?

Unless you are highly familiar with the world of IT services, cybersecurity, the cloud, and general IT troubleshooting, hiring an IT guy or two to help run your business can be risky. Resumes get exaggerated, skills get listed that haven’t been used in a decade, and quality varies from person to person. 

Let’s just assume you get lucky and hire a top-tier IT expert who knows their stuff. After all, you only have forty employees—one IT expert is enough, right? But what happens if there’s a crisis when your one IT guy is on vacation–who will be there to handle it?

The world of IT is a highly competitive world with large salaries. Anyone who works in IT will tell you they get at least two calls a week from recruiters hoping to tempt them away with the promise of double the salary, stock options, and an extra week of vacation. 

Sometimes, these temptations can be hard to resist, and suddenly your company is left in the lurch by the departure of the only person who knows how to keep your server room running smoothly while maintaining secure access. Managed IT services can prevent all these issues. 

What Can Managed Services Do for My Business?

Managed IT services take all of the typical IT services off a company’s plate. Suddenly, you won’t have the headaches or paranoia about losing your only experienced IT person, because now you have an entire team behind you. 

But isn’t a whole team of people more expensive than one IT guy? Yes, if you hire them to sit around full-time in your office waiting for something to go wrong. Thankfully, your office IT infrastructure doesn’t catch fire that often, so managed IT services can work on helping other clients, so you aren’t paying them for each and every hour. 

When there’s a crisis at your company, or you need new software installed company-wide, managed IT service firms can jump into action with their whole team to solve your issues and have your systems upgraded in hours instead of days. This saves everyone involved a whole lot of time and money. 

Managed IT services are typically run on a subscription model, and the cost depends on the type of services needed and the size of the services to be managed. You’ll typically find that the cost of managed IT services is reasonable and can be far cheaper than hiring your own IT team. 

Furthermore, because managed IT services have an entire team of people working for them, their employees can specialize in particular areas. They can have several employees who are cloud-focused and a separate team for cybersecurity–this helps to spread the load, and, as the saying goes, many hands make light work. 

This structure also enhances the capabilities and resiliency of the services being offered. In contrast, lone IT experts working at a medium-sized business may find their skills stretched thin, especially in times of crisis when they are needed most. 

It isn’t feasible for one or two people to understand the detailed nuances of every area of IT services. Most IT professionals spend their whole lives working with only a few specific types of software and programming languages. Deviating outside of that comfort zone often requires the help of outside advisors. 

The Smart Choice

Your company wouldn’t hire a plumber to be on the clock full-time, and the same should be true of IT experts. Choosing an IT service provider like Xvand can go a long way toward providing peace of mind, stability, and savings to your business.