February 14, 2018 (Updated January 30, 2022)
With IT talent shortages, particularly in cybersecurity and cloud, increasingly complex technical environments and unpredictable budgeting cycles, more and more organizations are turning to managed services models. Partnering with an IT managed services provider (MSP) allows your organization to outsource some or all of the IT functions and responsibilities to a third party based on a service-level agreement (SLA). The SLA is part of a contract and specifically outlines the services to be performed by the provider along with the required standards for those services.
In this article, we will discuss three reasons why midmarket organizations are partnering with MSPs and the value that MSPs deliver.
Enhance an Existing IT Team
While an organization could potentially outsource all of its IT to an MSP, it is often not the only, or even the best choice. It is best to view managed IT services in one of two ways.
For example, perhaps your IT team has strong storage and compute expertise but lacks specialization in new networking technologies. Rather than seeking out and hiring a full-time networking professional with a full salary and benefits, partnering with an MSP allows you to acquire the trained professionals on an as-needed basis.
Alternatively, your IT team may just need an extra layer of support in certain circumstances. For a midmarket business’ IT department, it may be difficult to find staff for overnight or holiday monitoring. When employees want to take vacations, covering the environment can prove to be challenging. One of the primary functions of any Mindsight SLA is 24/7 remote monitoring. This allows your organization’s IT director to keep your IT department lean while still providing essential support.
Offload Day-to-Day Tasks
The IT departments of midmarket organizations often find themselves preoccupied with day-to-day tasks such as updates, patches, tech support, maintenance, and monitoring. While essential for your business to run smoothly and securely, these cumbersome tasks can often take up most of your IT staff’s time. Where does that leave them the time to work on new IT initiatives, think strategically, and look at the bigger picture for your organization?
With a managed services provider handling these essential, but menial tasks, your IT team would be free to work on more critical projects for your business.
Fill the IT Talent Gap
Manpower is an IT team’s single-most valuable resource, but finding talent in today’s environment can be tough. After talking with our clients, we’ve isolated the five most prominent challenges they face when staffing their IT teams:
Finding the Right Talent:
Demand for specialists with specific skill sets and certifications is high. With cloud software and storage quickly becoming the backbone of many organizations’ operations, finding a cloud expert gets expensive.
Looking for a cybersecurity expert? Before the world saw a triple-digit increase in cybercrimes in the first half of 2021, there was already a shortage of cybersecurity experts, especially ones with advanced skill sets. With surges in cyber attacks, there is a mad dash to hire every available cybersecurity expert—new and seasoned.
When your business is looking for these sorts of prospective hires, it can be like searching for a very expensive needle in a mountain-sized haystack.
Turnover:
Fewer things hit harder than spending months of training and resources on a new hire only for them to up-and-leave for a higher offer. All of that time and money is gone and now you’re left to pick up the slack—the relief of finally having filled that empty position is replaced with frustration.
Not-So-Glamorous Standard Infrastructure:
Many businesses have fairly standard IT operations and a limited IT budget. They lack the luster and “wow-factor” to attract IT professionals with specialized skills who will rarely have an opportunity to flex these muscles or work with cutting-edge technologies outside of enterprise environments. These professionals tend to gravitate more toward technical incubators for work.
Technical Incubators and Mature Tech Companies:
Being located in close proximity to a major city like Chicago can be beneficial for accessing large talent pools, but there is also much more competition. With tech startups and offices of some of the most prestigious companies in the country, it can be hard to attract the promising professionals your organization needs. Competing with the likes of GrubHub, Groupon, Microsoft, and others can be extremely difficult.
IT Salaries:
According to Salary.com, the median IT director salary is north of $180,000. The median IT manager salary is nearly $110,000. Smaller companies may find it harder to compete against more attractive compensation and benefits packages offered by enterprise companies. When you consider the expense of training and enriching your team with more certifications—the costs of having an effective, well-rounded IT team add up quickly.
Finding IT talent is tough, and it’s only becoming more difficult. According to findings from Gartner, the talent shortage is “the most significant adoption barrier to 64% of emerging technologies, compared with just 4% in 2020.” A survey of IT professionals performed by TalentLMS found that 72% of respondents planned on quitting their jobs and exploring new opportunities in the next 12 months.
With these increasingly difficult challenges, it is more important than ever to make certain your IT team has the resources it needs to maintain your environment, and that includes manpower. An MSP, like Mindsight, can help fill IT gaps in talent. Mindsight engineers are highly certified, with over 95% of the team holding advanced certifications, highly experienced specialists in every technology area from cloud to cybersecurity, unified communications to data center infrastructure. Rather than trying to compete in the hiring market, you can access these specialists to fill specific needs in your company—oftentimes—for less than the cost of a full-time employee.
Managed Services at Mindsight
Managed services at Mindsight is much like we’ve already described. We offer managed service agreements to assist your IT department in any capacity that is required. From simple monitoring to full administration of your IT environment, Mindsight is ready to help your business reach its goals.
More specifically, we offer managed services in five key areas:
- Managed Security and Virtual CISO Services: Our cybersecurity experts deliver end-to-end threat intelligence, monitoring and management to detect and protect your business and the data it relies on against malicious activity and persistent threats. For clients in need of CISO expertise, our on-demand virtual CISO (vCISO) delivers affordable, comprehensive, performance-based services including security assessments, strategy development, training and ongoing management.
- Managed Cloud Services: Cloud environments require monitoring and management just like on-premise environments. Whether you’re starting your journey to the cloud or already there, Mindsight cloud certified engineers assess your workloads then migrate, manage, and optimize your hybrid cloud environments for optimal performance and cost.
- Managed Backup and Managed Disaster Recovery Services: Business continuity is critical in today’s climate and Mindsight’s expert-only engineers help you reduce risk by leveraging the cloud and “as a Service” models with advanced backup and DR architectures. Our engineers implement, manage, and test the backup of your data and critical systems to ensure restorability and validate retention. They assist in developing a documented, executable disaster recovery (DR) plan that includes ongoing testing and management. Our disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) offering helps protect your most valuable data and ensures continuous business operations.
- Remote Monitoring and Management Services: We manage your network, storage, servers, hypervisors, and applications. We provide alert monitoring, issue remediation, and ongoing maintenance for your organization, helping you optimize your environment for efficiency and cost savings. If it is part of or supported by your data center, Mindsight’s managed IT support services can provide ongoing monitoring and maintenance.
- Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS):Enabling today’s hybrid workforce is paramount. As a qualified Desktop as a Service (DaaS) provider, Mindsight leverages the innovative cloud capabilities from Microsoft Azure – with Mindsight’s managed services expertise. Mindsight’s DaaS solution is 100% cloud-based and delivers a superior user experience, enhanced security, and significant cost savings.
- Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS): Our dedicated unified communications as a service (UCaaS) offerings provide secure management of collaboration technologies and contact center environments. Ensure seamless experiences – for both internal users and external clients – by leveraging our expert- only engineers so you can dedicate your talent and resources to other priorities.
A managed services provider provides companies with a convenient way to solve their IT operational challenges. No matter what the problems consist of, there is a managed services agreement from Mindsight that can help.
Contact Mindsight today to learn more about our managed services offering to begin a conversation about improving your environment.
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About Mindsight
Mindsight, a Chicago IT services provider, is an extension of your team. Our culture is built on transparency and trust, and our team is made up of extraordinary people – the kinds of people you would hire. We have one of the largest expert-level engineering teams delivering the full spectrum of IT services and solutions, from cloud to infrastructure, collaboration to contact center. Our highly-certified engineers and process-oriented excellence have certainly been key to our success. But what really sets us apart is our straightforward and honest approach to every conversation, whether it is for an emerging business or global enterprise. Our customers rely on our thought leadership, responsiveness, and dedication to solving their toughest technology challenges.
Contact us at GoMindsight.com.
For Further Reading:
How Managed Services Keep Your Tech Roadmap on Schedule: A CIO Report