Sunday, 25 March 2018 Blog ehdf

Signs that you should embrace Managed IT Services

Everyday administration of IT infrastructure across a business and its processes is an involved and specific task that usually falls outside the core competencies of the enterprise. Businesses across industry verticals and a cross section of scale, complexity and requirements in Dubai are migrating to a structure that delegates most of their information technology related concerns to an external services provider. With a plethora of service packages and fully customizable solutions on offer, when is it time to migrate to this model of operations?

The one constant across business models, industries and operational paradigms is an emphasis on productivity and efficiency. We are in an age where it would be near impossible to find a business that does not have several mission critical operations that require the intervention of IT professionals and experts. Nevertheless, the core capacities and driving initiatives of most business have little or nothing to do, directly, with their information systems and its inner workings. Delegating these responsibilities to external entities that specialize in these technologies is often the most resource efficient and practical approach to take. From everyday functional efficiency to the capacity to address sudden spikes in demand and potentially catastrophic risks, the strategic option to deploy the expertise of the best in the business can often be the most sensible approach to take.

As convincing and logical as the argument presented above is, it is certainly the case that managed IT services are a relatively recent phenomenon. Despite the emergence of Managed IT Services in Dubai, is the strategy right for you? How can you determine if the advantages outweigh the initial disruption of taking the plunge and altering established institutional practice?

Here are a few signs that can help indicate that your company might be a prime candidate for generating efficiencies and advantages through the adoption of this strategy:

• Lack of dedicated IT staff. It can be commonplace for several small to medium sized enterprises to rely on a staff member with some basic IT related skills to administer their systems. While the arrangement can seem superficially convenient, it leaves the organization vulnerable to systemic failures that are beyond the skills of the individual concerned. Furthermore, the approach undermines the efficiency of IT administration, as well as the core function of the individual concerned.
• Recurring issues relating to your IT infrastructure. The continual recurrence of issues in the operation of information and data systems – whether hardware or software related – can often be an indication that the process capacities of your organization are being undermined by lack of specialized skill in everyday administration. There are several specific tasks to managing IT infrastructure that go beyond basic familiarity with deploying networks and shared software. Most IT solutions are fairly user friendly to an extent, however, extracting the best possible performance from them often requires a specific skillset and wide ranging experience.
• Lack of long term IT strategy and defined plans. Ad-hoc arrangements and reactive engagement with technology can be an indication that you are not optimizing your ROI on your IT infrastructure. It usually takes considerable experience in deploying and administering IT systems to be able to map solutions onto future business scenarios. As with other specialized systems, data and application systems are greatly enhanced by expertise in anticipating and managing change.
• Your ongoing IT outlay competes with other business costs. It’s often the case that businesses set aside adopting Managed IT Services for a later date, based on their perception of the costs involved. However, such presumptions fail to take into account that managed services can be tailored specifically to requirements, to an exacting degree. Contrary to the perception of the uninitiated, managed services can often significantly lower operational costs for businesses, thus freeing up precious resources for other ongoing expenses.

Conclusion

It serves the interests of most modern enterprises – across industries, scale of operations and other profile specifications – who are yet to deploy Managed IT Services, to investigate the solution. It can often be the case that they are ignoring an easily secured business advantage that can generate ongoing advantages and efficiencies.