Production support is a never-ending, relentless job. From IT management to the guys on call, you just don’t know what could go wrong or when.
Hardware problems at any hour, batch not completing at night, telecom issues, software updates gone wrong—the list is long, especially when you’re the entire IT department.
There’s no doubt that IT infrastructure monitoring and management is critical to your organization’s success. So why would you want to do it without adequate resources?
Here are six reasons why you should consider partnering with an IT managed services provider.
1. You’re tired of being woken up.
Literally, you’re exhausted, from being called in the middle of the night when something breaks and needs to be fixed ASAP.
You shouldn’t have to sacrifice your personal health to preserve the health of your IT systems.
A managed services provider that provides 24×7 coverage will resolve any issues that occur overnight and provide you with a report in the morning.
2. Response time needs to be faster.
How many customers will you lose to your competition during 24 hours of unplanned downtime? What about 48 hours? 72 hours? One week? One month?
When time is money, it’s imperative that organizations have the capabilities to resolve critical incidents as quickly as possible. Incident management “action plans” provide step-by-step instructions on how to resolve any issue, including who to contact.
Knowing who to contact is the first step toward quick resolution and bringing your systems back online.
Working with an experienced managed services provider can help your team create and execute your action plans while maintaining them with current documentation.
3. Effective monitoring requires 24/7/365 commitment.
Too often, companies that perform monitoring on their own will try to save money by requiring their IT staff, such as systems managers, technical managers and even software developers, to take care of their daily responsibilities while also filling in for round-the-clock monitoring coverage.
Part-time monitoring is rarely, if ever, a good thing for any organization. Incidents may get missed, notifications may be inaccurate and your contact lists may not be up to date.
What could’ve been a simple 30-minute fix now turns into a 24-hour downtime or longer.
Partnering with a managed services provider will give you a dedicated team of analysts who will provide 24×7 coverage and make sure your action plans are always up to date and easily accessible so that you can accurately identify incidents as they occur and respond to them quickly.
4. You’re not maximizing your monitoring tool’s functionality.
There are a lot of great monitoring tools available that will cover a wide range of needs, but a tool is only good as the amount of effort you put in to using it.
Purchasing a high quality monitoring tool is a major investment. However, a lot of companies are not maximizing their tool’s full potential.
Most MSPs, such as Odyssey Information Services, provide their own set of monitoring tools that will provide end-to-end visibility of your entire environment along with a team of analysts who understand the tools inside and out.
5. It’s time to be proactive and not reactive.
Rather than reacting every single time to an incident that has already occurred, proactive monitoring is an approach that uses trends and machine learning to predict incidents before they occur.
Proactive monitoring can address incidents at a higher rate, but it requires a dedicated team of analysts who are able to watch your infrastructure at all times.
Managed services providers have the tools, resources, and experience to do just that.
6. It’s cheaper than hiring an additional systems admin.
Think about the cost associated with hiring just one additional IT professional to monitor your environment. Now combine that with the cost of monitoring tools.
Why hire just one person when you can “hire” an entire team of experts who will provide their own set of tools to monitor any part of your production environment.
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