Are You Looking to Back Up Your IT Department?

Are You Looking to Back Up Your IT Department?

Does your internal IT team need help with the increased workload? Are they struggling to meet tight deadlines? This article highlights a simple solution.

A robust IT network is arguably the foundation of your entire organization. In our modern times, practically all your departments couldn’t go a day without reliable technology. However, the IT field is always changing. To remain in step with the rapidly advancing tech realm, you need an IT partner with a wide range of skill sets. Especially if your business is expanding quickly, your IT team needs to keep up with your increasing IT demands.

Do You Have to Choose Between Inhouse IT and Outsourced IT Services?

Holistic IT support isn’t a one-person job. At Atlantic-IT, we believe that teamwork is the key to a safe, reliable network. For quite a few years now, we’ve been providing premier IT solutions to businesses throughout New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Over that time, we’ve noticed a running theme among company representatives who find themselves in your position.

Briefly into our conversations, we realized that most of them were under the impression that they had to choose between their IT department and an MSP. Discouraged by the possibility of parting ways with their internal IT team, most of them felt they had no choice but to endure poor IT support.

To be fair, those are the two most popular options with most businesses. However, the past few years have witnessed the rise of a third IT management model: Co-managed IT services (COMITS).

Why is co-managed IT the preferred option for many organizations today? Because it allows you to enjoy the best of both worlds.

More Businesses Are Opting for Co-Managed IT Services for a Variety of Reasons, Such As:

• Their IT department lacks the technical expertise required to manage their overall IT strategy.
• They need support with daily routine tasks like data backups, troubleshooting, and software updates to allow their internal team to handle high-level projects.
• One of their remote branches needs reliable IT support.
• They are scaling up their efforts.

The list goes on. Despite having different motives, many more companies are moving towards co-managed IT services.

We wrote this article as a brief to everything you should know before choosing co-managed IT services. As a leading managed IT services provider (MSP), we take it upon ourselves to educate business IT decision-makers to help them make decisions that best address their needs. One of the most significant business decisions you’ll ever make is choosing your IT support. Don’t make the wrong call.

What Are Co-managed IT Services? In a nutshell, co-managed IT services refer to working closely with an IT services company to enhance the availability and capabilities of your internal IT team.  With co-management, you have the power to choose how functions are shared between your IT partner and your IT staff.

Co-management is aimed at supplementing your in-house IT team, not replacing it. We realize you have your reasons for sticking with your IT department. That said, in-house IT support has its limitations.

Let’s take a close look at the pros and cons of in-house IT support.

What Are the Benefits of an Internal IT Department?

You may prefer having an in-house IT professional for reasons such as:

• You Have More Control: Because your IT department is dedicated to providing tech support to your business only, you can enjoy timely solutions that follow your preferred procedures. That’s because you control various aspects, including:
  • Task prioritization
  • Work quality
  • Time
• You Save More Sometimes: Generally, it’s more expensive to hire and train a full-time internal IT professional compared to outsourcing to an MSP. But there are limited cases whereby insourcing might be the more affordable option. A good example is whenever you encounter an unexpected IT setback. An internal team would address the issue without disrupting your budget, unlike an MSP, which would charge you extra.
• It’s Convenient: You can call your IT guy whenever you hit a snag.

What Are the Limitations of Internal IT Support?

• You Have Little Access to Technical Expertise: The field of IT is incredibly vast, yet most IT departments have only a handful of staff.  To make it worse, most of them lack recent qualifications.
• Your Network is Unsafe: Your IT staff clock out after normal business hours, leaving your network at the mercy of several cybercriminals and other threats.
• It’s Expensive: Because experienced IT experts are in high demand, securing their services isn’t cheap. Financing an entire IT department could cost up to twice what you’d need to pay an MSP.

Why Should You Choose Co-Management?

Co-management enables you to outsource and insource your IT services simultaneously. Consequently, you get to enjoy the benefits of both options.

However, there are four main advantages to co-managed IT services:

• Your Internal Team Will Be Free to Focus on Urgent Issues: If your in-house team is frequently overwhelmed by the higher workload, it’s time to support them with a co-managed team. By allowing an MSP to take over routine tasks, your internal staff can focus on high-level roles. What’s more, you’ll have fewer errors resulting from overwork.
• Your Organization Can Scale Easily: As your business expands, you’ll inevitably need to scale up. With co-managed IT services, it’s equally convenient to scale either up or down. Let’s say you need a more affordable alternative to recruiting more IT staff. Co-managing would be an easy fix. Also, when you no longer need as much support, you can quickly scale back.
• Your Data Will Be Secure: Co-managing gives you access to security awareness training for your staff. As a result, they’ll be much better at identifying cyber threats like phishing emails. Your MSP can also come in to perform regular vulnerability assessment and penetration testing to ensure your data is secure.
• You’ll Budget More Accurately: All your co-managed IT services will be covered under an affordable monthly subscription fee. The services include:
  1. Account management
  2. Remote monitoring
  3. Help desk services

Ready to Leverage Reliable Co-Managed IT Services and Scale Your Business?

Outsourcing and insourcing aren’t mutually exclusive. You don’t have to drop your IT department to outsource reliable IT services. Let us give you the help you need.

Contact us now to get started.