Quiz: Is My Company Too Big To Really Outsource IT Or Help Desk?
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Companies are partnering with Managed Solution's leading IT engineers and gaining access to our award-winning 24/7 San Diego-based help desk service.
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4 Ways Outsourcing IT to a Managed Services Provider Can Increase Efficiency
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4 Ways Outsourcing IT Through Managed Services Will Help Your Business
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Businesses around the world are turning to Managed Services to improve their workplace. Boost efficiency while reducing costs by outsourcing your IT department. Here are 4 ways outsourcing IT through Managed Services will help your business:
1) Experienced professionals
There are very few problems that an IT outsourcing company has yet to see. Sure your current IT guy might have graduated from MIT, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s dealt with every IT problem that a small craft brewing business in San Diego might need help with. A Managed Services Provider will always have experienced professionals that have faced an outstanding variety of situations and knows how to fix them.
2) Reduce IT and labor costs
By outsourcing IT, you can convert fixed costs into variable costs so you can see and budget for exactly what you need. Pay-as-you go allows you to scale your business up and down so you pay for what you really need day-to-day and not for what you think you might need. Plus, the hiring process of new IT professionals is becoming more and more difficult, lengthy, and expensive. Skip this costly step by outsourcing IT with the best professionals without the hiring hassle.
3) Increase core business efficiency
By eliminating the headache of an IT department, businesses can get back to focusing on what they do best. This means having more time and resources to implement new business ideas, increase competitive advantage, and also relay these benefits onto the customers.
4) Decrease risk (and increase security)
One of the biggest fears of companies today is losing data. With the digital-zation of so many, if not all, important documents, files, research, records, and more, companies have to be more and more aware of backup and disaster recovery. Managed Services providers can easily implement and explain BDR plans that are custom-fit to each company. This means no more worrying about whose hands your data is in if your employee loses his mobile device or company laptop. All your data can be secure and reliable.
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Why automation doubles IT outsourcing cost savings
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Why automation doubles IT outsourcing cost savings
By Stephanie Overby as written on cio.com
New research analyzes automation’s impact on the IT outsourcing market, revealing double-digit productivity improvements and specific cost reductions between 14 percent and 28 percent.
Outsourcing consultancy and research firm Information Services Group (ISG) this week unveiled a new research report to quantify the cost savings and productivity gains from automating IT services.
The inaugural Automation Index shows improvements in productivity fueled by automation can more than double the cost savings typically derived from outsourcing IT. Total cost reduction ranged from 26 percent to 66 percent, depending on the service tower, with 14 to 28 percentage points of these savings directly attributable to automation, according to ISG. (The typical cost savings from labor arbitrage and process improvements alone range from 20 percent to 30 percent).
The report is based on cost and labor data from ISG’s database covering outsourcing agreements with an annual contract value of $10 million or more in which service automation is a core component. The index is one of the first to quantify the impact of automation on IT services. Automation-related technologies and platforms improve the productivity of employees by enabling them to do more with less and prevent problems before they arise, translating into lower costs for buyers by not only reducing the number of provider employees needed to perform the work but also by reducing the amount of work that needs to be performed.
The result, says Steve Hall, partner with ISG Digital Services, is a buyer’s market that’s putting tremendous pressure on services providers to deliver more and more savings to stay competitive. “As automation moves up the IT process value chain and into business processes, it will eliminate a significant amount of workthrough problem avoidance and self-healing, and with it, a significant amount of the headcount needed to deliver large-scale ITO services,” Hall said in a statement accompanying the report.
Where automation has the biggest impact
Automation is having the biggest impact on areas in which employees manage physical devices, such as network services. Most IT towers see an average 25 percent decrease in the number of resources required as a result of automation, but certain IT services experience a 50 percent headcount reduction, according to ISG. ISG found that network and voice costs are declining by 66 percent mostly due to the convergence of voice, video and data solutions built on highly standardized and virtualized capabilities, an environment ripe for leveraging automation. Service desk and end user support costs declined by 26 percent due to increased adoption of self help and remote support, the introduction of self-healing functionality, and significant automation of level one and two incidents.
Higher-order automation
Most of today’s automation is focused on computerizing repetitive tasks based on standard operating procedures but more complex automation is beginning to emerge that takes advantage of more advanced data mining and machine learning capabilities, says Stanton Jones, ISG director of research. That higher-order automation can make operational decisions with no human involvement.
In order to seize the benefits of increased automation and plummeting IT services costs, however, buyers will have to transform to more standardized technology stacks across the IT organization. “The more clients standardize things like operating system instances, application interfaces, ITIL processes, and network infrastructure, the easier it is to automate operations,” says Jones. “Standardization means less interfaces, less complexity and fewer decisions that need to be made, therefore, it becomes easier to automate.”
Buyers should also approach process automation tools with standardization in mind. “Service providers are driving increased productivity into their services by using data mining and machine learning to aggregate and correlate data and then improve the quality and timeliness of decision making for routine and repetitive tasks,” Jones says. “Clients can enable and execute these transformations by accepting standard processes and technologies providers bring to the table.”
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Looking for a partner in your business' managed services needs? Call us at 800-790-1524 to learn about all that we offer!
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Case Study: Marquette University
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Case Study: Marquette University improves communications with familiar voice and conferencing solution
Marquette University is a coeducational institution in Wisconsin with 11,700 students and 2,700 faculty and staff. The university prioritizes its commitment to providing students and faculty with comprehensive communication tools. As the next step to updating its voice, conferencing, and instant messaging solution, Marquette is moving to Skype for Business and anticipates increased collaboration, flexibility, and adoption, in addition to cost savings.
Business needs
Marquette University is a private Jesuit college in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with 8,400 undergraduate students, 3,300 graduate and professional students, and 1,200 faculty. There are 11 different schools and colleges within the university that offer a comprehensive range of majors. Marquette is a nationally ranked institution with notable designations as a Changemaker Campus and the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll.
Marquette is an early adopter of technology and aims to provide students and staff with comprehensive communications solutions that include voice, conferencing, mobile, and instant messaging capabilities. University students and faculty rely on these solutions every day: professors conduct remote classes; students from the business school interview for jobs out of state; the IT team works with vendors outside of the university; and various departments use videoconferencing for events and meetings. “We like to stay current on technology, if not on the cutting edge,” says Dan Smith, Deputy CIO of IT Services at Marquette University.
In 2012, Marquette deployed Microsoft Lync Server 2013 to begin hosting its own conferences. At that time, the university started to retire its private branch exchange (PBX) telephone system and installed voice over IP (VoIP) to reduce costs and provide a wider range of communication options to the campus community. Its goal was to complete the PBX migration by summer 2015.
The university also hoped to increase adoption of communication tools by providing a solution that was familiar to users. It wanted to improve flexibility and productivity with more mobile and video use and encourage students and staff to communicate more easily with people off campus. However, users were only able to use VoIP to communicate with outside partners who were federated in the same system.
“Trying to get solutions that let students and faculty communicate with people outside of Marquette has always been a challenge,” says Victor Martinez, Windows Team Lead at Marquette University.
Solution
Skype for Business was the natural next step for Marquette. It offered similar functionalities as Lync 2013, in addition to the intuitive interface of the Skype client that many students and staff were already familiar with.
In early 2015, the IT services department at Marquette began the process of upgrading Lync Server 2013 to the Skype for Business Server 2015. The migration went smoothly as the IT team mirrored the production environment, which included servers and full functionality.
“It was like spinning up a side-by-side environment with our current environment. We were able to move users as needed, and then add additional users as we became more confident with the new solution,” says Martinez.
The university has been working toward retiring its PBX system for the past three years. Now in its final phase, it began migrating users directly from the PBX system to the Skype for Business Server, and is rolling out the Skype for Business client to the migrated users.
Marquette currently supports 330 users on the Skype for Business client, and it has already prepared an additional 30,000 accounts that are licensed and ready for use—enough to support all current staff and students, and new enrollments for the upcoming academic year. Marquette also expects to support 4,000 to 5,000 phones on the Skype for Business Server.
Marquette sees the new Skype for Business client as a hybrid between the consumer Skype client and Lync 2013. “The changes aren’t as drastic as we thought they might be. The overall place where you go to do things or look for things has basically stayed the same. There’s a continuity that people will see as they go from Lync 2013 to Skype for Business.”
Benefits
By moving to Skype for Business, Marquette anticipates increased user adoption and collaboration and improved flexibility. It also continues to reduce overall telephony costs by migrating users from its previous PBX system directly to Skype for Business.
Increased adoption and collaboration with familiar interface
Skype for Business offers the capabilities of Lync 2013 plus the familiarity that many users already have with Skype, meaning the campus community will be more likely to use the new solution.
“Some of the UI that you see within the Skype for Business client now mirrors the Skype interface on the consumer client,” says Smith. “We expect to see more widespread adoption as people can easily find and communicate with other Skype users and bring them into conversations.”
It will also be easier to collaborate with students, partners, and vendors outside of the university. “Now we can communicate with people worldwide who are using Skype while we’re on campus using Skype for Business—connecting this way is really powerful,” says Martinez.
Improved flexibility with mobile and video capabilities
Marquette believes users will start taking advantage of the Skype for Business mobile app that includes video, audio, IM, and content viewing and will provide the flexibility that students and faculty need to get work done anywhere, anytime. While desktop clients have dominated traditionally, that is likely to change at Marquette as many students are heavy mobile users.
“We’re going to see a lot more people use mobile and tablet devices to access Skype for Business for presentations and videoconferences,” says Martinez.
Recently, the IT department has received more requests for video support. Because Skype for Business provides messaging, audio, and video apps from a single solution, Marquette can offer students and staff new ways to collaborate, both internally and with users outside of the university. “A lot of external users already use Skype, which makes the experience of joining our meetings a lot easier,” says Martinez.
Continued cost savings
As part of Marquette’s migration process, it moved its telephony system from a physical connection to a virtual connection through Session Initiating Protocol (SIP). By moving to a SIP connection, Marquette saved approximately $125,000. “Disabling the ports on the PBX system saves us money as we continue to move this project forward,” says Smith. To date Marquette has saved approximated $95,000 in PBX costs.
Marquette is meeting its commitment to provide cutting-edge communications tools to student and faculty, without making additional investments in its IT infrastructure. The university was able to utilize its existing hardware for its new communications solution. “Skype for Business doesn’t require different hardware than what we currently have,” says Martinez.
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