“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency. “
-Bill Gates
-Bill Gates
Well it’s once again a new year and as usual much has changed in technology over the last twelve months. If you’re like most businesses and rely on technology to keep you competitive in your market than it makes sense to keep abreast of what’s going on in the industry. Technology can either give businesses their competitive advantage or be the curse that sinks the ship depending on how it’s utilized. With this in mind, it seems wise to take advantage of the tools available to the best of one’s ability. The biggest new trend I’ve seen emerge in this last year is really more of a concept, a mindset shift if you will, and this tool is called Managed Services.
With modern technology, companies now have a choice of having their network truly managed by another company. This means that companies specializing in network management can run dozens, even hundreds of networks at the same time – perhaps even yours. This is done through new tool sets that allow a managed service provider (or MSP) to view all the details of a company’s network remotely – I mean ALL the details; who’s virus detection is up to date, who’s is not, which computers have all their Windows critical updates and security patches installed, which do not, whether or not the daily backup is working, who on the network is using the most network bandwidth (and slowing everyone else down), who is playing games on work time, who’s hard drive is almost full, who is constantly waiting on their computer because it doesn’t have enough memory. I’m talking everything – anything you could possibly determine while actually sitting in front of a computer (and then some) can now be done remotely – and holistically. What I mean by that is rather than looking at every single computer individually it is now possible to get an executive overview on the entire health of a network and pinpoint individual trouble areas from there. Imagine looking at a map of the world then being able to zoom in all the way to your own house – and indeed to be able to see what you’re cooking for dinner - this is what can be done with a network today; complete macro to complete micro vision. This means a network can be managed from the top down – proactively. Why wait for someone to complain because their computer has stopped working when you can just ensure all the Windows patches are being done for them eliminating technology problems before they become business problems? Why wait for someone to run out of hard drive space to then take their computer down to upgrade the drive – might as well start planning an upgrade when you know that hard drive is going to be full soon, not already full.
So why is this new business model so important? Total cost of ownership. When you can properly manage a network and take care of problems before they occur you save money – lots of money. Think about the cost of downtime in your workplace – if someone gets a virus and can’t use their computer for a day what does that cost? No really – have you figured this out? Well if you’ve got more than a few computer users you really need to know this – downtime costs more than most people tend to want to think about when translated into dollars and cents. It’s expensive. According to Gartner, “PC hardware and operating system choices are no longer the greatest determinants of PC total cost of ownership (TCO). The most effective way for an enterprise to reduce the total cost of ownership of its PCs is through the implementation of management best practices across all phases of the PC life cycle. Use of tools and technologies to automate and speed up PC deployments can yield significant savings that represent a surprisingly high proportion of total deployment costs. Our model shows that automating these processes can reduce deployment costs by up to $578 per PC. However, many organizations have not made significant changes to their processes in this area for several years.” Total cost of ownership goes down when you’re not paying a technician $100+ an hour to come fix a problem that has already occurred. If you can pay less up front to ensure you don’t have problems in the first place you’re going to come out way ahead – proactive vs. reactive. The key is this – you pay for the service in general – not per instance of repair. In other words, it’s network insurance – pay a flat rate per month per computer to be managed. This means you have a team of technicians (“owned” by the MSP) that constantly monitors your network to keep it running. This can now be done relatively inexpensively because a good MSP is going to utilize automation tools that alert them when something is out of line. And because they have that macro-to-micro view I spoke of earlier, management becomes much more cost effective. In this model it’s in the best interest of the MSP to keep your network running smoothly because now it costs them when there’s an incident because they’re responsible for fixing the issue. This is the alignment many companies have been waiting for for a long time. In the past, when an IT support company “managed” a network under some sort of hourly plan it really didn’t make any difference to them if your network went down – they charged to get it up and running again. In this new model it’s in their best interest to keep the network up because they’re on the hook to fix it at their expense if something goes wrong. This is very good news for small business indeed!
Managed services is without question the biggest buzz phrase in the industry right now, and it’s easy to see why. “Gartner’s Desktop PC TCO model confirms once more that well-managed PCs can be significantly less expensive to operate than unmanaged systems. Such environments can have a TCO that is more than 40 percent lower than the TCO for an environment that 's not managed at all. “Any additional investment in manageability still leads to cost savings. “
The wisdom of this model is easy to see because it makes so much sense for so many people and it’s profitable for the MSP because now they can focus on what they do best – and with the new tools now available, managing many networks concurrently is quite doable. I foresee huge shifts over the coming year to this type of model as businesses finally get fed up with cousin Ned once and for all and tire of paying hundreds per visit to fix problems that just seem to keep happening. This is the year of proactive network management, true visibility into the information systems your company relies on, IT best practices realized and implemented. This is the competitive advantage many small businesses have been looking for – big company management, small company costs. If you haven’t looked into managed services yet, now may be the time – be proactive, not reactive.
Want to learn more about how managed services work? Find out about it on our website or contact me (734-3400 x150 or edonofrio@nwcomputer.us) and I’ll send you information that will help you determine whether this revolutionary technology makes sense for your business.
