According to one recent study, the global managed services market hit an enormous $186 billion in value in 2020.
By as soon as 2025, that number is expected to grow to $356 billion - representing a compound annual growth rate of 13.3%.
It doesn't matter what type of business you're running or even the industry you're operating in.
These days, most organizations are "tech-driven" whether they think about themselves that way or not.
Private practices and other healthcare organizations use electronic health records (EHRs) to digitize patient records.
This leverages IT to make it easier to coordinate among healthcare providers, communicate with patients, and to ultimately more accurately diagnose and treat patients.
Everything from telemedicine to patient portals is so heavily dependent on technology that if you were to remove IT from this environment, it would cease to function.
The same is true of personal finance.
Organizations like community banks depend on technology to support online banking platforms, financial planning software,
CRM systems, fraud detection applications, and more.
But at the same time, investing in these solutions is one thing.
Supporting them is another. Most organizations attempt to do this with an in-house IT department, but that isn't always realistic.
The mean annual wage for an IT person in the state of Maryland, for example, is $117,500.
Supporting even five such employees who then need to support your business is an enormous expense - and that's before the hardware and software costs associated with maintaining an in-house environment.
Thankfully, an alternative has emerged in recent years that has created a way for organizations to still enjoy these types of technological advancements without the massive upfront investment required.
A managed service provider, otherwise known as an MSP for short, brings with it a wide range of benefits that are absolutely worth a closer look.
In a general sense, an MSP is a third-party partner that will remotely manage a client's IT infrastructure and systems on their behalf, essentially providing them with every resource they need as part of a fixed recurring subscription.
In a traditional IT environment, if you had five users that needed workstations, the responsibility would fall to you to provide those resources.
You would need to spend time researching, buying, configuring, and maintaining hardware and software.
Any updates would need to be installed by you.
If you hired a new employee, suddenly you had more workstations to contend with - and so on and so forth.
These costs are not only large, but also unpredictable.
An MSP is a way to give those employees access to the same resources, only with a recurring subscription that also comes with MSP benefits like 24/7/365 monitoring.
Instead of hiring an employee to wait for something to break and then fix it, an MSP will provide you with a team of people who are dedicated to proactively detecting and resolving issues before they impact your business operations.
Indeed, that may be the best way to sum up the major difference between MSPs and traditional IT support: proactivity versus reactivity.
Take network management. In a traditional IT environment, monitoring for issues like network intrusions in real-time is incredibly difficult and labor-intensive.
More often than not, in-house employees will need to fix a problem that has already happened and attempt to contain the damage, as opposed to preventing that problem from ever happening in the first place.
By their nature, an MSP is in a better position to be the proactive source of assistance you need.
They have the resources needed to regularly back up data and to offer disaster recovery solutions to protect against data loss.
They can implement and manage security measures designed to protect against even the most rabid threats like malware, phishing, ransomware, and others.
It's not that you can't achieve these same results with your own in-house IT department - it's just that it is very complicated and expensive to do so.
Rather than paying for IT support on a "time and materials" basis, which can lead to wildly variable costs depending on the amount of support you need, you can exchange everything for a fixed monthly fee or subscription model.
At that point, the money you're saving can then be funneled back into other areas of the organization where it can have the biggest positive impact.
Note that this also doesn't need to be an "either/or" scenario. MSPs can and often do complement internal teams.
They can handle routine tasks like maintenance, allowing your internal IT team to focus on more strategic initiatives.
They can also provide training to internal staff to get your own people to the point where you might not need additional support at all.
For most organizations, one of the biggest MSP benefits (and the reason they started looking for this type of support in the first place) has to do with the cost-savings they get to enjoy.
Outsourcing and flexible pricing models make sense given the fact that there is no "one size fits all" approach to how an organization will need IT support.
Rather than forcing you to ultimately pay for a lot of resources you don't need, an MSP can build an infrastructure that is optimized for your unique objectives.
You are then charged accordingly, so at the very least you're not paying for any IT resources that aren't actively generating some type of return.
Another one of the major benefits has to do with how they give you access to specialized IT experience and advanced technologies that you may not be able to replicate on your own.
MSPs provide access to a wide range of specialists, including but not limited to cybersecurity experts, network engineers, compliance consultants, and more.
This would likely be costly to hire internally.
They also invest in the latest technologies and tools so that they can stay competitive, giving clients like you access to cutting-edge solutions without the need to spend an exorbitant amount of money themselves.
Finally, many organizations enjoy the scalability and flexibility that MSPs offer when meeting growing business needs.
Again - consider the time and money-related costs that go into adding even a new user to your network.
Hardware needs to be procured and configured.
Software needs to be installed.
Updates need to be run.
That's another person who will need some level of tech support.
There will be training involved.
The list goes on and on - and you're just talking about what you need to do in order to get that person up and running on your enterprise.
Or, you could exchange all that for a process that is literally as simple as picking up the phone and making a call to your MSP.
You tell them what resources you need to add, and the changes are made.
If necessary, the price you pay per month is adjusted accordingly.
This gives businesses the flexibility to scale up and down at will.
It's a model that can support everything from seasonal fluctuations to an organization that is growing larger all the time.
That's not as easy to achieve if you're still operating on an entirely in-house model.
Imagine that you're a small community bank with a limited IT staff.
These hardworking employees are spending the majority of their time just trying to keep things up and running - they have little bandwidth left to devote to things like cybersecurity measures.
This only increases the likelihood that you might one day become a victim of the type of cyber attack that is becoming more common all the time.
If you partnered with an MSP, however, they would offer 24/7 monitoring, cybersecurity expertise, compliance management, and more - all to put a baseline level of security in place so that you could spend less time worrying about what you might do if an intrusion attempt does occur.
Or, let's say you run a healthcare practice that needs to A) leverage electronic health records to modernize your practice, but B) is having a hard time meeting compliance with HIPAA regulations on your own.
An MSP would be able to offer specialized EHR management, as well as advanced features like backup and disaster recovery, to make sure that regulatory requirements are not something you have to concern yourself with any longer.
These are just a few scenarios that underline why you should at least consider an MSP for your organization.
Rest assured there are many, many more.
In the end, a managed service provider isn't just an alternative to traditional IT support - it may literally make more sense depending on the type of organization you're running.
In an environment like a healthcare facility, unplanned IT downtime is more than just a minor inconvenience.
It could literally cost lives, delaying medical professionals from being able to provide patients with the critical care they need.
If the IT infrastructure of a small community bank isn't managed properly, clients could be cut off from a major part of their lives - their personal finances.
For organizations operating in highly specialized fields or even just facilities that are in the process of growing, managed service providers can be a great way to leverage all the benefits of modern technology with as few of the potential downsides as possible.
Having said that, it's also important to acknowledge that not all MSPs are created in quite the same way.
There are a number of important factors to consider when selecting a partner, chief among them being the industry-specific experience they bring to the table.
If you operate in the healthcare space, you don't just want a "general IT company."
The way a private practice uses technology is vastly different from something like a car dealership.
You need an MSP that has healthcare-specific experience and that knows the unique challenges an organization like yours is likely to face.
You need an MSP that acknowledges how important your goals are and why they must be accomplished.
Only then will you be able to find someone that is every bit as invested in your success as you are.
The same is true when it comes to the size of your business and the number of users an MSP will be supporting.
The IT needs of an accounting firm will be vastly different from a community bank with thousands of clients to support, even though they're both operating in the same "industry."
All this is why, when exploring MSP partnerships, you need to find a company willing to tailor their offerings to your needs rather than forcing you to change the way you operate to make up for the "limitations" of their solution.
Find an MSP that will take the time to learn about your business, your people, and your field.
Only then will you be able to guarantee that you're finding a provider that will help your business enter a bold new era.
To find out more about how a managed service provider can benefit your business, or to get answers to any other related questions that you may have, please don't delay - contact us today.
