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Why businesses are turning to managed IT services
More organizations are turning over certain IT functions to managed service providers, freeing internal IT staff to focus on strategic IT projects
Organizations are increasingly turning to managed service providers (MSPs) to handle elements of their IT needs as part of a collaborative arrangement with the internal IT department, according to new research from IT industry trade association CompTIA.
MSPs have been around for a long time, but adoption has been relatively low. As late as last year CompTIA found that only 3-in-10 organizations had any of their IT in the hands of an MSP, says Carolyn April, senior director, Industry Analysis, at CompTIA. But more than two-thirds of companies surveyed for CompTIA's Fourth Annual Trends in Managed Services Study, released Monday, say they have used the services of an outside IT firm within the past 12 months.
Companies have become more familiar with managed services and are turning to them for management of certain IT functions, particularly email hosting, customer relationship management (CRM) applications, storage, backup and recovery and network monitoring.
"While one-time projects account for some of these engagements, a significant portion is ongoing management of one or more IT functions by a managed services provider," says April, who is also author of the report. "There is a much higher degree of familiarity with the term 'managed services' and greater adoption."
Top MSPs extending their reach
Some upper echelon services are offering managed services around data analytics, business intelligence (BI) and advanced application monitoring — and April says there is increasing demand in those areas — but most MSPs have yet to extend beyond their heritage in managing network infrastructure and basic software infrastructure.
"I think mobile is an area where the channel is getting some traction but they're really not tapping the full opportunity there," she adds.
Part of the awareness problem in the past has been a definitional one, April says. In these days of software-as-a-service (SaaS), the customers (and sometimes providers) remain unclear about what actually constitutes a managed service.
"I think the definitional issue is an enormous one," she says. "It's one of the things that has made it extremely difficult to market size the managed services space and determine adoption rates."
The MSP community hasn't done the best job communicating the benefits of managed services to end users, April notes, though the fact that usage has nearly doubled in the past year suggests they've begun to do better.
Partners, not replacements
It is also important to note that while companies are increasingly relying on outside providers for part of their IT needs, MSPs generally complement rather than replace internal IT.
"Very few of these companies get rid of their IT staffs just because they join up with an MSP," April says.
Instead, especially in larger companies, bringing an MSP into the mix frees up existing IT staff to focus on more strategic projects.
"It elevates the IT staff and brings them out of the shadows within the organization," she says. "It allows them to focus on a custom app dev project or cloud initiative — something highly strategic. I think that's a win-win for your IT staff."
That also highlights that the reasons that organizations turn to MSPs have begun to change. In the past, April says, cost savings were seen as the primary benefit of MSPs. Now, she says, cost benefits are considered table stakes and customers are looking for additional benefits like generating revenue and helping the company become more efficient. Even security has evolved from being considered a roadblock to using MSPs to a reason for doing so.
April explains that companies have shifted their views over security as it has become clear that security problems are often the result of human error by internal staff.
Why IT turns to MSPs
CompTIA found that improving the efficiency and reliability of IT operations was a main driving factor for going with an MSP for 56 percent of companies with 100 or more employees and 47 percent of companies with fewer than 100 employees.
Enhanced security and compliance was a driving factor for 38 percent of companies of all sizes. ROI/cost savings was a driving factor for 33 percent of companies with 100 or more employees and 28 percent of companies with fewer than 100 employees.
The trade association found that six-in-10 respondents that consider their technology usage advanced are using an MSP for physical security services. Also, 63 percent of the same group are using an MSP for application monitoring. The managed services that are lowest in demand to date are videoconferencing, mobile device management and audio/visual services.
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We specialize in providing full managed services to businesses of every size, industry, and need.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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Jason joined the Managed Solution team as a Java Developer on January 18, 2016. Growing up around farm equipment and having a passion for old cars, Jason began his career as a mechanic at ten years old when he decided to purchase and restore a 68’mustang. Jason took this passion to the service and later worked his way up to designing engines and mods for Marionette Marine (FMSNA), the biggest ship builder in the world. Jason changed to Software Engineering in 2014 due to a physical disability, and now joins us as he finishes up his Bachelors in Software Development at the end of 2016.
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By Sarah Perez as written on techcrunch.com
Get ready for Yammer, Microsoft announced today – and it’s not kidding. Microsoft said this afternoon it will begin to activate Yammer for all its eligible Office 365 business customers starting today, in what’s a major push for the enterprise social networking service. The rollout will come in waves, beginning with those customers who have a business subscription, and fewer than 150 licenses, including one for Yammer.
The second phase of the rollout on March 1st will expand Yammer to larger business customers, who have fewer than 5,000 licenses, but excluding those with education subscription.
The final phase, or Wave 3, starts on April 1, and will include those education subscriptions, as well as all remaining customers.
The end result of this push is that every Office 365 users with a Yammer license will be able to use the service from the Office 365 app launcher, as well as start Yammer conversations from within SharePoint, Office 365 Video Portal, and soon, Delve and Skype Broadcast as well.
Effectively, it’s elevating the product to become more of a fully-fledged member of Microsoft’s suite of tools aimed at businesses.
By being baked into Microsoft’s existing products and services, Yammer will become more useful than when it was a standalone product ahead of Microsoft’s 2012 acquisition. For example, Yammer will be hooked into the Office 365 Groups service in the first half of this year, which will let customers do things like turning Yammer conversations into Skype calls, schedule meetings with Outlook calendar, access files in OneDrive, create tasks in Planner, from within Yammer’s groups.
Yammer has fallen out of the limelight since Microsoft bought the company for $1.2 billion several years ago. Not much had been said about the service since. And it’s fair to say that many wondered if Microsoft ever intended to do much of anything with it, beyond making it available for those who wanted it.
But in recent months, Yammer has seen new competitors arise. Currently, its biggest competition is Slack, which Microsoft also recently had to acknowledge the importance of, in its own way – the company introduced Skype integration last month, that is. And Facebook has been ramping up its efforts with its business-focused Facebook for Work, which could pose a challenge to Yammer in the future when it becomes publicly available.
For now, however, Yammer still has a shot at grabbing a foothold thanks to Microsoft’s big push to its Office 365 commercial customers.
With the rollout, Yammer will be switched on by default, though Microsoft says that admins will be able to dial that back, if need be, noting that “if you are not ready to fully adopt Yammer in your organization, you can un-assign Yammer licenses for those who should not access Yammer from Office 365.”
Well, seems like it would just be easier to go live on Yammer than have to go around turning it off for people, doesn’t it?
More details on the Yammer integration is available here.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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