Outsourced IT – Is It Right For You?

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Maintaining the IT infrastructure for any business, even small ones, isn’t easy and it requires a lot of different skills which are nearly impossible to find in one person.  There’s the obvious day-to-day desktop support and server management.  But there’s also cloud services to be supported, web sites and databases to be taken care of, keeping up with the latest security issues and doing all this while fixing that executive’s laptop that just died.  Even if you do find all of those skills in one person, they are going to command a pretty hefty paycheck, well into the six-figure range.  And, then they go on vacation, or come down with a prolonged illness or decide to go find themselves and raise Alpacas and you have to start over.  Another down-side with in-house staff is that they can get…stale.  They know what they know and may be really good at supporting what you currently have but the longer they are with your company, the less they know about how other companies do things.  It becomes more and more difficult for them to be a real champion for improving your IT operations.

This is when outsourcing your IT operations to a Managed Service Prover (MSP) really shines.  For a predictable monthly fee (which is significantly less than the cost of that single IT employee) you get an entire team of IT professionals with varied backgrounds and skills.  Regardless of your need, the MSP has someone on board that can help.  You’ve got an IT security audit coming up?  Grab the CISSP on staff at the MSP and put her on the job.  Also, the MSP staff work with dozens of clients so they are constantly seeing new and different technologies and are much more in tune with the latest changes in technology.

We at 1 Point have saved companies tens of thousands of dollars every year by being their trusted, outsourced IT management and support company.  Here are just a few examples:

  • A biotech company of about 20 employees had a part-time IT support person costing them approximately $60,000 per year. We were able to provide unlimited support for under $30,000 per year while making several improvements to their infrastructure to improve efficiencies.
  • We were able to provide A 75+ employee property management company with unlimited support for under $85,000 per year (which is significantly less than what a single senior engineer would cost).

There are many things that you just don’t have to worry about when you outsource your IT operations:

  • No worrying about vacation coverage
  • No need to hire and fire anybody in IT
  • No surprise sick days that through a wrench into things
  • No reviews, no raises and no health insurance to worry about
  • No loss of institutional knowledge when the in-house expert leaves

So, to sum things up, here are the biggest benefits for outsourcing your IT to an MSP:

  • An entire team of IT experts at your disposal
  • Significant cost savings
  • Access to many different skill sets
  • Enterprise grade IT management systems to maintain and document your IT operations

To be sure, outsourcing is not a perfect fit for every company.  There are some cases where the internal mission-critical IT systems are so unique and specific to the company that in-house expertise is necessary.  That said, in MOST of those cases, the MSP can backfill the less company-specific tasks and enable the in-house team to focus on the critical line-of-business tasks.

Want to learn more about how outsourcing to an MSP can help your business – – reach out to us at 781-683-0700 or info@1point.net